In article <9ko78h015vj / enews1.newsguy.com>,
Alex Martelli <aleaxit / yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Phil Tomson" <ptkwt / shell1.aracnet.com> wrote in message
>news:X2Jb7.24637$C7.9671673 / e3500-chi1.usenetserver.com...
>    ...
>> Questions for the Ruby community to ponder: What sorts of features do we
>> need that might be unique to Ruby?  [One that comes to mind: the ability
>> to extend an existing class.]  For the
>
>In what sense is this "unique to Ruby"?  The following works in Python:

Sorry, I don't know Python that well.  But I was also referring to the 
ability to change built-in classes like Array or Hash for example, I can 
add a rotate method to the built-in Array class and everytime I 
instantiate an array after that I can call the rotate method on the 
instance.

>
>It seems to me this similarity fully extends to the issue you've
>mentioned.  I don't know enough Ruby to know if it's quite as
>dynamic as Python (in Python I can, on the fly, change the class
>to which a given instance belongs to, 

I think Ruby can do this.

>add and delete methods

You can do this in Ruby.

>from an existing class, add or override a method as defined by
>a class in a specific instnace only, 

You can do this in Ruby.

>change a class's bases...) --

Not sure about this one - do you mean that you can change the class's base 
class?

Phil