From: Jason Creighton <androflux@...>
Date: 2003-09-11T14:31:32+09:00
Subject: How are global methods defined?

Hi,

How are global methods defined in Ruby? I know you can just

def just_a_method(arg)
  puts "do stuff"
end

....and you can call it anywhere. I had thought that those methods are
automagically added to Kernel, but appearently that's only methods
defined from C with rb_define_global_function (which just adds the
method to Kernel), or those methods define in Kernel like so

class << Kernel
  def just_a_method(arg)
    puts "do stuff"
  end
end

or:

module Kernel
  def Kernel.just_a_method(arg)
    puts "do stuff"
  end
end

But anyway, the question is, what happens to methods defined at the
top-level like that? Are they just added to Object? And if that's the
case, why do we even have Kernel?

Jason Creighton