From: jweirich@...
Date: 2000-11-14T09:02:19+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6325] Class Browser Questions

I did some more work on the GemFinder Class Browser I posted last
week.  I'm finding it a handy tool for exploring the Ruby class
library.  The latest release is now on RAA.

Playing around with it has raised the following questions ...

1) What's the best way to convert from a class name string to a class
   object.  I've been using Eval(class_name) and trapping any NameErrors.
   I could also search ObjectSpace looking for a match.  Is there a
   better way?

2) I've been looking at singleton methods and noticed that for a class
   object c

      c.singleton_methods == c.methods - c.superclass.methods

   Will this always be true for class objects?

3) I would like to be able to tie classes and methods to source
   files.  Currently, I don't see a direct way of doing this.  The
   "Programming Ruby" book hints at using runtime callbacks to capture 
   information about the system being defined.  I'm thinking about
   wrapping "load" and "require" to record the file currently being
   loaded and then hook into class and method definitions to record
   that information.  Does this sound reasonable?

4) What about reloading source files?  I would like to be able to
   reload a source file to get the latest changes.  I suspect that the 
   naive approach might have problems.  Can source files be arbitrarily 
   reloaded?  How can I detect deleted methods?

-- 
-- Jim Weirich     jweirich@one.net    http://w3.one.net/~jweirich
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"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, 
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)