A ruby method to replace "="

Question

Hi, I want to eliminate "=" sign for a particular reason. It might looks like this:

cat_that_has_name("Kelly").as(:kelly)
kelly.do_something

The "as" method here is used to generate a method "kelly" that reference my cat. Could anyone help me with this?

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Update:

Jorg was right, I've add a simple test to demonstrate my intention:

require "test/unit"

class AsTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def setup
    @cats = ["Kelly", "Tommy"]
  end

  def teardown
  end

  def test_as
    kelly1 =  get_cat("Kelly")
    get_cat("Kelly").as(:kelly2)
    assert_equal(kelly1.object_id, kelly2.object_id)
  end

  private
  def get_cat(name)
    @cats.each do |cat|
      if cat.to_s==name
        return cat
      end
    end
    return nil
  end
end

Answer 1

It's kind of hard to figure out what you actually want. If you want some sensible answers, you will have to provide a complete code example of what you want to achieve (for example, the code you posted is missing definitions for the cat_that_has_name and so_something methods). You will also need to post a complete specification of what exactly you expect the as method to do, with usage examples and ideally also with a testsuite. After all, how do we know if our answer is correct if you haven't defined what "correct" means?

The best I could decipher from your cryptic question is something like this:

class Object
  def as(name)
    s = self
    Object.send(:define_method, name) { s }
    Object.send(:private, name)
  end
end

But there is no way of knowing whether this works, because if I try to run your code example, I get a NoMethodError for cat_that_has_name and another NoMethodError for so_something.

Note also that your question is self-inconsistent: in your subject line you ask about a method to replace = (i.e. creating variables) but in your question you talk about creating methods, which would mean that you are looking for a replacement for def and not for =. Again, it would be much easier to answer correctly if there were a testsuite.