So, because I am British, I always initialise objects with the name initialise() and quite often get the error Error in initialize: (wrong number of arguments (given n, expected 0)).
Is there some meta programming I can do to make initialize() for all objects try to call initialise()?
Something like this might work; but anyone reading or using your code might hate you. :P
class BasicObject
alias american_initialize initialize
private def initialize(*args, &block)
if respond_to?(:initialise)
initialise(*args, &block)
else
american_initialize(*args, &block)
end
end
end
Please don't do this. Ever. But let's teach people how to shoot themselves on the foot:
class BasicObject
def self.new(*args)
if instance_methods.member? :initialise
allocate.initialise(*args)
else
super
end
end
end
So what's happening here: We just overwrote the .new definition. By default it calls #allocate and then #initialize passing down the *args you sent to it.
.allocate allocates the memory for the object but does not call #initialize over it, so we check if the object has a #initialise instance method defined, if it has it gets called, otherwise default behaviour (super) is used.
super of BasicObject.new?
Class#new in this case (and I think it would be cleaner / less confusing to just override Class#new instead).
super will be called on the context of the invoker and will travel up the inheritance chain until it finds .new defined somewhere (usually Class). @Stefan I'm not sure if overriding this in Class would work, or if any changes would need to be made as Class.new is kinda of a special beast.The did_you_mean gem (comes with Ruby 2.3 and later) can help you to avoid such errors:
require 'did_you_mean/experimental'
class Foo
def initialise
end
end
Output:
warning: initialise might be misspelled, perhaps you meant initialize?
The code behind this feature uses method_added to monitor the addition of new methods and prints a warning if the Levenshtein distance between the method's name and "initialize" is ≤ 2.
initializeandinitialiseare defined in a class? Which one has "preference"? Also, you might use a library or gem where someone legally defines aself.initialise, which however is not intended to be used as constructor, and at the same time has not defined ainitializemethod, because he is happy with the default. I certainly would not want to debug errors resulting from this kind of problem....asd98fi12jk2naoshujibdh1sdasd2asdfa2rfxs? There's a reason why people don't use lolcode language for serious projects... It's annoying, as isinitialize