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.
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Feature #19742: Introduce `Module#anonymous?`
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/19742#change-103637
* Author: ioquatix (Samuel Williams)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
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As a follow-on <from
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/19521>gt;, 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
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