Hi --

On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Jean-Hugues ROBERT wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> This may be somehow stupid but what about simply inheriting
> from Hash ?
> 
> In the worst case you aren't going to use the hash default
> implementation at all, because you would provide your own
> implementation for the storage. But that case is not that bad,
> because I suspect that the overhead is very very small.
> 
> class MyObject < Hash
>   def [](key)
>     my_ultra_efficient_get( key)
>   end
> end
> 
> Then you can kind_of? Hash as usual.

I think this didn't come up because Sean was asking more about duck
typing (rather than the kind_of? approach).  But the matter of
inheriting from built-ins is an interesting one in its own right.
I've always liked it; it never bothered me that my objects had "extra"
methods, since most objects have methods I never use anyway.  But that
objection has been raised by lots of people, though I've never quite
understood the rationale.


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack / wobblini.net