From: Rudolf Polzer <denshimeiru-sapmctacher@...>
Date: 2003-07-05T03:19:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Using & for arrays of objects

Scripsit ille �Josef 'Jupp' Schugt� <jupp@gmx.de>:
> * Rudolf Polzer; 2003-07-04, 09:43 UTC:
> > Scripsit ille �Robert Klemme� <bob.news@gmx.net>:
> > > In fact we both made an error here: you need a factory and a
> > > helper class (both sub classes of Human) to create a new Human.
> >
> > Which Ruby doesn't support: an object cannot be created without
> > using a constructor.
> 
> Well, the correct terminus technicus in this case is *creator*, not
> *constructor*.

Hm... really?

I thought the *creator* calls the *constructor*.

> An instance of Human is made by a creator that
> (depending on circumstances) takes up to two instances of Human to
> form a new instance of Human as in (for details see Gen 2 and Gen 4):
> 
> adam  = Human.new()
> eve   = Human.new(adam)
> kain  = Human.new(adam,eve)
> 
> The single-argument form not requires h.gender == male as can be seen
> from
> 
> jesus = Human.new(mary)

Hm... that is, jesus is created the same way as eve? Seems like it should
rather be

  jesus = Human.new(God, mary)

Note the capitalization: God is a constant, an instance of a singleton
class. It's normally not created directly but using wrapper classes
like Jahwe, Allah, maybe even KamiSama (well, the exact class name can
only be written in multi-byte character codings, but how to uppercase
the first character then to make it a constant?). There's at least one
such wrapper class per religion. Some people even call their personal
God wrapper class instance "root", which has the advantage of it being
modifiable (lower case). [1]

But all of these are local variables. A global ($) variable pointing
directly or indirectly to some God reference seems to not exist, which
explains why there are so many different religions.

> > So how is the "first" object created?
> 
> That question does exist as long as philosophy. I think that we are
> not expected to solve this here:

Maybe in a C module? It should be possible to "manually" create a Ruby
object from inside C code, without using a constructor.


[1]: Some people think God is the world's root but forgot His password,
     losing all control over it. But as long as nobody finds a local[3]
     root exploit[2], there shouldn't be any big problems with that.

[2]: The US for example seem to be looking for one extensively.

[3]: Hm... how would a REMOTE root exploit look like then?