From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2004-02-18T15:10:13+09:00
Subject: "require_next"?


Trying to run irb on QNX6, I learned that there is a 48 char limit to 
file names. The long filenames generated by Tempfile (called from 
irb/locale.rb) were preventing irb from running. So I installed the 
following code in site_ruby under the name "tempfile.rb" so that it 
would be loaded before the real tempfile:

   ==== tempfile.rb ====
   basename = File.basename(__FILE__)
   $".delete(basename)
   dirname = File.dirname(__FILE__)
   idx = $:.index(dirname)
   $:.delete(dirname)
   require basename
   $:.insert(idx, dirname)

   class Tempfile
     alias long_filename_initialize initialize
     def initialize(basename, tmpdir=Dir::tmpdir)
       basename = basename[/.{0,25}$/] # last 25 chars
       long_filename_initialize(basename, tmpdir)
     end
   end
   =====================

It's a horrible hack. What I would really like is something like "super" 
but which applies to the way require finds files, rather than the way 
ruby finds methods. (One problem with this hack is that whatever happens 
during "require basename" had better not depend on the directory that 
was temporarily hidden, or else you may get the wrong file or no file at 
all.)

Is there an easy way to implement this in ruby? If not, should it be 
provided as a primitive by the interpreter?