Programming Ruby

The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide
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class Class
Parent: Module
Version: 1.6

Index:

inherited new new superclass

Classes in Ruby are first-class objects---each is an instance of class Class.

When a new class is created (typically using class Name ... end), an object of type Class is created and assigned to a global constant (Name in this case). When Name.new is called to create a new object, the new method in Class is run by default. This can be demonstrated by overriding new in Class: 

class Class
   alias oldNew  new
   def new(*args)
     print "Creating a new ", self.name, "\n"
     oldNew(*args)
   end
 end


 class Name
 end


 n = Name.new
produces: 
Creating a new Name

class methods
inherited aClass.inherited( aSubClass )

This is a singleton method (per class) invoked by Ruby when a subclass of aClass is created. The new subclass is passed as a parameter. 

class Top
  def Top.inherited(sub)
    print "New subclass: ", sub, "\n"
  end
end


class Middle < Top
end


class Bottom < Middle
end
produces: 
New subclass: Middle
New subclass: Bottom

new Class.new( aSuperClass=Object ) -> aClass

Creates a new anonymous (unnamed) class with the given superclass (or Object if no parameter is given).

instance methods
new aClass.new( [ args ]* ) -> anObject

Creates a new object of aClass's class, then invokes that object's initialize method, passing it args.

superclass aClass.superclass -> aSuperClass or nil

Returns the superclass of aClass, or nil.

Class.superclass » Module
Object.superclass » nil

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Extracted from the book "Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide"
Copyright © 2001 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/)).

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