From: "Sean O'Dell" <sean@...[REMOVE_THE_SPAM]>
Date: 2003-09-12T08:55:12+09:00
Subject: Global object instance?

I'm thinking, why do we have globals at all?  I wonder if it would be 
possible to just corral all the "global" stuff (methods, variables, 
etc.) and just assign all that to a top-level object instance and use 
that object as the default "global context?"

I'm thinking: no fixed global context at all.  Just an object instance 
that acts as the global context.

By default, you could "mixin" the Kernel module and that would take care 
of most the backwards compatibility issues, eh?  If not, hopefully you 
could mixin other modules to finish the job.

One advantage I'm thinking of is that you could re-assign the global 
context to be any object instance, and all global-style references 
($variables, ::methods()), would then refer to the new object.

So if you had:

   class NewGlobal
     include Kernel

     def initialize
       @stdout = File::open("capture.txt",
         File::RDWR|File::TRUNC|File::CREAT)
     end
   end

.... in one call, you could print to the console:

   print("this goes to the screen\n)

.... then you could switch things up:

   Global::push(NewGlobal.new)

print("this gets captured\n)

.... then return to the previous context:

   Global::pop


Kind of a nutty idea, maybe?

	Sean O'Dell