Why initialize?

ruby-talk
1

One thing I have often wondered is why the ruby constructor isn’t called
new?

In my laziness I would rather type new than initialize.

It seems clearer than initialize, and appears to work just fine.
Perhaps both could be supported?

What thoughts?
Ralph

class Foo
def new
puts "Foo.new"
end
def Foo.new
x=super
x.new
x
end

def bar
    puts "Foo:bar"
end

end

Foo.new().bar

2

— Ralph Mason ralph.mason@telogis.com wrote:

One thing I have often wondered is why the ruby constructor isn’t called

new?

In my laziness I would rather type new than initialize.

Set it up as an alias :new etc…???

– Thomas Adam

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3

Ralph Mason wrote:

One thing I have often wondered is why the ruby constructor isn’t called
new?

In my laziness I would rather type new than initialize.

It seems clearer than initialize, and appears to work just fine.
Perhaps both could be supported?

What thoughts?
Ralph

class Foo
def new
puts “Foo.new”
end
def Foo.new
x=super
x.new
x
end
def bar
puts “Foo:bar”
end
end

Foo.new().bar

Search ruby-talk archives at
http://www.ruby-talk.org/ruby/ruby-talk/index.shtml
for many discussions on the issue.

Gennady.

4

FWIW, in vim, I use !init and it types

def initialize()
end

This works for me.

-austin

···

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 07:49:26 +0900, Ralph Mason wrote:

One thing I have often wondered is why the ruby constructor isn’t called
new?

In my laziness I would rather type new than initialize.

It seems clearer than initialize, and appears to work just fine. Perhaps
both could be supported?

–
austin ziegler * austin@halostatue.ca * Toronto, ON, Canada
software designer * pragmatic programmer * 2004.01.14
* 22.46.06

5

“Ralph Mason” ralph.mason@telogis.com schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:4005C74A.7040304@telogis.com…

One thing I have often wondered is why the ruby constructor isn’t called
new?

Maybe because there are two things involved in object construction and
different names make this clearer: first an instance is allocated and
then it is initialized. At the point in time when initialize is run,
the memory is already allocated.

Regards

robert

In my laziness I would rather type new than initialize.

It seems clearer than initialize, and appears to work just fine.
Perhaps both could be supported?

You can do

class Foo
def i(bar, baz)
@bar, @baz = bar, baz
self
end
end

f = Foo.new.i(“how’s”, “that?”)

Regards

robert
6

Hi,

···

At Thu, 15 Jan 2004 07:49:26 +0900, Ralph Mason wrote:

One thing I have often wondered is why the ruby constructor isn’t called
new?

Note that classes also are objects. Singleton method new and
instance method initialize have to be separated.

–
Nobu Nakada