Ruby - How to reproduce the pointers/references behavior ?

Question

Hey :)

I am currently trying to create an engine for a new application.

Design is quite complex and i realy need a way to create a reference or a pointer or what ever way to remotely modify and access the datas. Datas must be kept in a single place and must not be duplicated.

Is there a way do get an object by reference ? For example can I get the instance of a class with his object_id ?

Thanks for your help ;)

Answer 1

Not sure exactly what you want to achieve. Ruby uses references for all custom objects already.

You may want to look at the delegate library.

require 'delegate'

obj = "foo"
ptr = SimpleDelegator.new(obj)
ptr.upcase # => "FOO"
other_obj = "bar"
ptr.__setobj__(other_obj)  # make ptr point to another object 

Answer 2

The following should demonstrate how to get a reference to an object and de-reference it:

   s = "I am a string"                    #=> "I am a string"
   r = ObjectSpace._id2ref(s.object_id)   #=> "I am a string"
   r == s                                 #=> true

You may wish to review the documentation for Object and ObjectSpace.