From: Ryan Dlugosz <ryan@...>
Date: 2003-08-13T02:48:24+09:00
Subject: Re: common constructor idioms

Scott Thompson said:
> Though there are bound to be differing opinions on the subject (and I
> have no desire to start a flame war so please be kind) I was curious to
> know is a popular idiom in Ruby code or not?  More to the point, would
> someone who was using an Ruby extension reasonably assume that this
> initialization mechanism was included?

That would work, but I'd suspect that it isn't popular around these parts.
 I would also suggest that it's probably *not* safe to assume that type of
initialization system is included with any given extension...

It would be a much clearer implementation to specifically define a
deep_copy method in your class, a la:

def deep_copy
  Marshal.load(Marshal.dump(self))
end

Of course, if you don't need a deep copy, you've already got
Object.clone... someone smack me if I'm way off base here. :)

-Ryan

-- 
Ryan Dlugosz
ryan@dlugosz.net

http://dlugosz.net