Issue #19742 has been updated by ioquatix (Samuel Williams). Permanent is already a word used in the Ruby documentation and implementation. I agree it might not be clear, but it's already established when talking about "class paths" and names. if we introduce a new name, we should have a strong reason to do so. Out of the two, I'd say `permanent?` as proposed has a stronger meaning than `anonymous?` as in some cases both can be false but in that case, `permanent?` is correct while `anonymous?` is probably at best misleading and at worst wrong. ---------------------------------------- Feature #19742: Introduce `Module#anonymous?` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/19742#change-103637 * Author: ioquatix (Samuel Williams) * Status: Open * Priority: Normal ---------------------------------------- As a follow-on <from https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/19521>, I'd like propose we introduce `Module#anonymous?`. In some situations, like logging/formatting, serialisation/deserialization, debugging or meta-programming, we might like to know if a class is a proper constant or not. However, this brings about some other issues which might need to be discussed. After assigning a constant, then removing it, the internal state of Ruby still believes that the class name is permanent, even thought it's no longer true. e.g. ``` m = Module.new m.anonymous? # true M = m m.anonyomous # false Object.send(:remove_const, :M) M # uninitialized constant M (NameError) m.anonymous? # false ``` Because RCLASS data structure is not updated after the constant is removed, internally the state still has a "permanent class name". I want to use this proposal to discuss this issue and whether there is anything we should do about such behaviour (or even if it's desirable). Proposed PR: https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/7966 cc @fxn -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/