From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2003-04-15T17:13:25+09:00
Subject: Re: using ruby reflection to generate code

On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 10:25:55AM +0900, Doug Beaver wrote:
> phil and i talked over private email about DumpNode, it looks promising,
> at least for figuring out names and types of method arguments, maybe
> even the return type.  i also thought it might be possible to put
> attr-like hints in the ruby code, so you could do:
> 
> class Song
>   def play(track=0, duration=0)
>     args :track, Fixnum, :duration, Fixnum
>     retval :didPlay
> 
>     # try to play the track here, set didPlay to false if it didn't work
>     return didPlay
>   end
> end

Perhaps you could even treat them as assertions, e.g.
     assert(track.is_a? Fixnum)
     assert(duration.is_a? Fixnum)

which are checked at runtime (in Ruby) but used as compile-time hints (for
more static languages)

Just a thought...

Brian.