From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2002-12-07T08:57:06+09:00
Subject: Re: (Top-level "functions" == private methods).is_evil?

Hi,

In message "(Top-level "functions" == private methods).is_evil?"
    on 02/12/07, Mauricio Fern�ndez <batsman.geo@yahoo.com> writes:

|I was recently quite surprised to find that top-level "functions" are
|actually private instance methods of Object, for I really expected them to be
|singleton methods (see http://www.ruby-talk.com/blade/57607). This seemed
|"unclean" to me from the beginning, because I saw that this would mean
|that all Ruby objects were getting strange private methods, but OTOH
|nothing seemed to be wrong as the public interface was not modified,
|and these methods were shadowed by new ones.

"functions" cannot be singleton methods of the top-level object.  If
they were singleton methods, how do you "print" inside of a method,
for example?

They are evil, as you said.  But I have no better alternative idea.
Any other "function" ideas make Ruby too complex.  I had to
compromise.

							matz.