Question

I have a class like:

class Configuration
  def self.files
    @@files ||= Array.new
  end
end

Now instead of doing this:

irb(main):001:0> Configuration.files
=> [file, file, file]

I would like to be able to do this:

irb(main):001:0> Configuration
=> [file, file, file]

But I can’t figure out how, any ideas?

---

@glenn jackman:

I was thinking of adding extra methods to a ‘Configuration’ constant that’s a hash. So if I had…

Configuration = Hash.new
Configuration[:foo] = 'bar'

I wanted to be able to save this Configuration hash constant to be able to dump to and load from a YAML file I wanted to be able to use…

Configuration.load
Configuration.save

I wanted the Configuration class to look like

class Configuration
  def self.save
    open('config.yml', 'w') {|f| YAML.dump( self , f)}
  end
  def self.load
    open('config.yml') {|f| YAML.load(f)}
  end
end

Answer 1

irb’s top level just calls ‘inspect’ on the result, so by overriding it you can customize what you see in irb:

$ irb
>> class Configuration
>>   def self.files
>>     @@files ||= Array.new
>>   end
>>   def self.inspect
>>     @@files.inspect
>>   end
>> end
=> nil
>> Configuration.files << 1 << 2 << 3
=> [1, 2, 3]
>> Configuration
=> [1, 2, 3]