From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2004-02-21T09:24:16+09:00
Subject: Re: inheriting constants

Ara.T.Howard wrote:
> is this an appropriate way to inherit constants?

You are organizing your options as a set, but if you are interested in a 
hash model, you might be interested in a "class_superhash", which is 
sort of a hash that inherits key-value pairs according to the class 
hierarchy. F'rexample:

require 'superhash'

class A
   class_superhash :options

   options[:foo] = 1

   def options; self.class.options; end
end

class B < A
   options[:bar] = 2
end

p A.options
p B.options.to_hash
p B.new.options.to_hash

# Output:
# {:foo=>1}
# {:foo=>1, :bar=>2}
# {:foo=>1, :bar=>2}

The underlying superhash objects support the same interface as a hash. 
(This is in my superhash package on RAA.)