Dynamic finding of missing constants

Hi.

I'm doing some slightly interesting things with Ruby, and I wanted to know of there's a language way of interrupting the process for finding a Constant name, like the method_missing method. The closest thing I've been able to work out is to rescue the NameError at some toplevel, but this is not transparent enough for me. Anyone have good any good suggestions?

Regards
  Ola Bini

Yep, const_missing().

James Edward Gray II

···

On Nov 25, 2005, at 10:22 AM, Ola Bini wrote:

Hi.

I'm doing some slightly interesting things with Ruby, and I wanted to know of there's a language way of interrupting the process for finding a Constant name, like the method_missing method.

I'm doing some slightly interesting things with Ruby, and I wanted to know
of there's a language way of interrupting the process for finding a
Constant name, like the method_missing method.

You have Module#const_missing

moulon% ri Module#const_missing
--------------------------------------------------- Module#const_missing
     mod.const_missing(sym) => obj

···

------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Invoked when a reference is made to an undefined constant in _mod_.
     It is passed a symbol for the undefined constant, and returns a
     value to be used for that constant. The following code is a (very
     bad) example: if reference is made to an undefined constant, it
     attempts to load a file whose name is the lowercase version of the
     constant (thus class +Fred+ is assumed to be in file +fred.rb+). If
     found, it returns the value of the loaded class. It therefore
     implements a perverse kind of autoload facility.

       def Object.const_missing(name)
         @looked_for ||= {}
         str_name = name.to_s
         raise "Class not found: #{name}" if @looked_for[str_name]
         @looked_for[str_name] = 1
         file = str_name.downcase
         require file
         klass = const_get(name)
         return klass if klass
         raise "Class not found: #{name}"
       end

moulon%

Guy Decoux

Ah, sorry. Thanks for the pointer. I thought I checked for it. But apparently my brain is fried after to much friday-work.

/O

···

At 17:28 2005-11-25, you wrote:

On Nov 25, 2005, at 10:22 AM, Ola Bini wrote:

Hi.

I'm doing some slightly interesting things with Ruby, and I wanted
to know of there's a language way of interrupting the process for
finding a Constant name, like the method_missing method.

Yep, const_missing().

James Edward Gray II