Question

I’m wondering if one could define a class in Ruby to have the following sort of usage:

Class Book
    def Book
        puts self.to_s 
    end
    def initialize(name)
        @name = name
    end
    def to_s
        @name.to_s
    end
end

Usage:

Book "To Kill a Mocking Bird"   #=>To Kill a Mocking Bird

The idea that I want is for this to behave like the following

1. An instance of the method is created (as a short hand).
2. The method Book is immediately called after this and performs a block of code.

(The intent of having the method named the same as the class is to have the call back when it is used like a method.)

Is this possible in Ruby?

Answer 1

How about this?

class Book
  attr_accessor :name

  def initialize(name)
    self.name = name
  end

  def to_s
    name
  end
end

def Book(name)
  Book.new(name)
end

puts Book("To Kill a Mocking Bird")

---

As a minor point of interest, Ruby’s Kernel module uses such a technique (written in C) to implement methods named Array, String, and so on:

Array(12)          #=> [12]
String(12)         #=> '12'
Integer('0x12')    #=> 18