From: sabbyxtabby@... (Sabby and Tabby)
Date: 2003-03-11T22:30:49+09:00
Subject: Re: $0  false ??

Eric Hodel <drbrain@segment7.net> wrote:

> Sabby and Tabby (sabbyxtabby@yahoo.com) wrote:
> 
> > And, an off-topic challenge:  anyone know how to get $0 to return the
> > current time?
> > 
> >   puts $0    # Mon Mar 10 02:21:26 PST 2003
> >   sleep 10
> >   puts $0    # Mon Mar 10 02:21:36 PST 2003
> 
> uhhh.... why would you want that?  That's totally silly
> 
> use Time.now

Why would anyone want to climb Mt. Everest?  It's a challenge! :)

Yes, returning the current time is silly.  Perhaps returning
Apache.Request.filename is less silly.  The idea is to have $0
invoke a method to return a calculated value, something akin to
Perl's tie() mechanism.

A quick search turns up StringMixin in MetaRuby.  Unfortunately,
#puts only calls #to_s on non-String objects.  And $0 can only be
assigned a String/subclass -- is $0 an example of a typed variable
in Ruby?

Admittedly, the challenge is probably impossible for $0, but doable
for normal variables.

-- 
Tabby