You could just extend the hash class, rather than inheriting from it. 
That is, instead of this:

class myHash < Hash
	def foo
		...
	end
end

Do this:

class Hash
	def foo
		...
	end
end

Then, all your hash objects will be given your 'foo' method and you can 
do things like this:

{:key => "value"}.foo

David

Neville Burnell wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a class inheriting from Hash which has some specific methods
> operating on the hash elements:
> 
> Class MyHash < Hash
> 
>   def foo
>   ...
>   end
> 
> End
> 
>  ....
> 
> Now, with Hash class, its really easy to create a new hash, eg
> 
> h = {:key1 => "val1", :key2 => "val2"}
> 
> What I would like to do is create a new instance of the class with the
> same simplicity, but I'd like to avoid creating a redundant Hash and
> tranferring the contents one by one to MyHash which happens if I code:
> 
> h = MyHash.new(:key1 => "val1", :key2 => "val2")
> 
> and then define initialize(h={})
> 
> Whats the "ruby way" tm for something like this?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Nev
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
David Mitchell
Software Engineer
Telogis

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