Ruby - Ensure Syslog Gets Closed

Question

Is it absolutely critical that I always close Syslog when I'm done using it? Is there a huge negative impact from not doing so?

If it turns out that I definitely need to, what's a good way to do it? I'm opening Syslog in my class constructor and I don't see a way to do class destructors in Ruby, and currently have something resembling this:

class Foo
  def initialize
    @@log = Syslog.open("foo")
  end
end

I don't immediately see the place where the Syslog.close call should be, but what do you recommend?

Answer 1

The open method accepts a block. Do something like this:

class Foo
  def do_something
    Syslog.open do
      # work with the syslog here
    end
  end
end

Answer 2

It looks like you're opening it as a class variable... so the proper way would be to do...

class Foo
  def initialize
    @@log = Syslog.open("foo")
  end

  def Foo.finalize(id)
    @@log.close if @@log
  end
end

Though this is not necesssarily predictable or supported. It's the way to do it if you're going to keep the code the way you do.