From: Thomas Sondergaard <thomas@...>
Date: 2003-09-05T00:46:09+09:00
Subject: Re: warning: toplevel constant XX referenced by YY::XX

> Yes, but I think we need to wait for a while to make a transition.
> So can you wait for a moment, probably until 1.8.1?

Yes, sure.

> By the way, you may have problems also for constant name conflict.
>
>   module Foo
>     Foo1 = 42
>   end
>
>   class Bar
>     include Foo
>     def Bar.const_missing(id)
>       id
>     end
>   end
>   p Bar::Foo1
>   p Bar::Foo2
>
> Is it OK for you?

Strictly speaking this is a problem for me, but not something that is likely
to cause too many problems in the real world.

As I see it const_missing and method_missing are called too late to serve
their purpose correctly. They should be called before looking in parent
scopes. The way it works now is probably a pragmatic (in the generic sense)
trade off, that avoids trading too much performance for a niche feature.
Maybe the real solution is to introduce a new built-in object, say,
DynamicObject that invokes the *_missing methods earlier in the resolution
sequence. This would require that method invocation and constant lookup
suffered one extra layer of indirection, but it could be implemented in C
and probably wouldn't make a noticable performance difference. Or maybe this
"dynamicity" property could just be a flag on the class, I dunno.

This is just me thinking out loud. You are the language expert, I am just a
hack.

Cheers,

Thomas