From: Charles Comstock <cc1@...>
Date: 2004-04-25T11:14:06+09:00
Subject: A way to do automagical instantiation of variables for a specific type

I just discovered a pattern that I have found to be quite useful.  In 
essence it allows for me to do automagically instantiation of variables 
for a specific type.  I have found it to be particularly useful in code 
that has multiple mutex locks.  For instance:

mlock = Hash.new {|h,k| h[k] = Mutex.new }

then later throughout my code when I need  mutex I say
mlock["entry"].synchronize do
   # blah
end

or
mlock["exit"].synchronize do
   # exit blah
end

It's nice because that way I don't have to keep instantiating new 
mutexes in the initalization code, I just add one whenever I need it. 
Anyway, I thought it was a useful hack and thought I would share it.

Charlie