From: Dan Sugalski <dan@...>
Date: 2003-06-05T05:07:07+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby-dev summary 20201 - 20315

At 2:34 AM +0900 6/5/03, Chad Fowler wrote:
>On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Paul Brannan wrote:
>
>>  On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 06:50:39PM +0900, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:
>>  > Why not do
>>  >
>>  > myArray = Array.clone.freeze.new
>>  >
>>  > and then implement irb w/ myArray.
>>  > That way changes in Array don't affect the interpreter.
>>
>>  IMO, this is indicative of a more general problem than just IRB.  If
>>  one module changes Array, code in another module might not be compatible
>>  with those changes.  Ideally it should be possible to isolate changes to
>>  builtin classes to a single module.  I'd wager that's even harder to
>>  implement than it sounds, though.
>>
>
>This topic came up at RubyConf 2001 during David Black's Ruby Behaviors
>talk.  David Simmons (creator of SmallScript or S#) suggested the need for
>something called "selector namespaces", which has been discussed (with
>David's input) in ruby-talk:18567.

It's actually not all that difficult under some circumstances, but 
there are some costs associated with it. Basically what you need is 
both lexical namespaces and namespace overlays. Not a trivial task, 
by any means, but doable if you need it. (Whether it's worthwhile or 
not is a separate issue, of course)
-- 
                                         Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                       teddy bears get drunk