transfire wrote:
> Well, I think its basically because Matz used the class nothing more
> then an easy way to implement ad hoc methods. It was the methods that
> mattered to him, not the class --the class was just a vehicle. He's
> talked about the possibility of not utilizing the class in the future.
> I assume that means these methods would then just exit in a separate
> underlying namespace of the class, as opposed to a separate class
> altogether. Which may also be the reason he's allowed then name to
> remain a bit amorphis and never provided a convenience method for
> accessing it.

Hmm.. Ok.  But, with Ruby, you can still dynamically create subclasses 
that aren't singletons and extend them as well as instanciate instances 
of them, right?  That would provide the flexibility I was referring to 
above, but I suppose it would require typing quite a few more 
characters.  So do I understand correctly that Matz designed the whole 
singleton creation mechanism ( << ) as a shorthand for doing more 
long-winded dynamic creation/enhancing?

--J

BTW, I haven't said so explicitly yet (but it might be gathered from 
other posts) that I think Ruby is a very cool language.  I've always had 
an interest in self-modifying code and of the langs I've studied so far, 
Ruby makes it the most sane.  Of course, we aren't supposed to be doing 
that stuff anyway. :) (makes it too hard for readers/maintainers to 
understand).

-- 
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