Issue #12848 has been updated by byroot (Jean Boussier). Status changed from Open to Rejected Given the feature request I think we can just close it. ---------------------------------------- Feature #12848: Crazy idea: Allow regex definition for methods (Do not take it seriously please) https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12848#change-100312 * Author: shevegen (Robert A. Heiler) * Status: Rejected * Priority: Normal ---------------------------------------- Me again, sorry - only crazy ideas coming about as of late here. ### Crazy idea: Allow regex definition for methods I should wait until first april. :) But anyway. Consider this: ```ruby def foo_bar puts 'hi there!' end; alias foobar foo_bar ``` Ok now we can call this either as: ```ruby foo_bar() foobar() foo_bar foobar ``` All things work! Here I was wondering ... what if I can omit the alias part? Tada! Enter regex-defined methods as idea! ```ruby def foo_?bar puts 'hi there!' end ``` Now the above works too, without any alias. Yay! I assume that this may not be possible perhaps syntax-wise - and perhaps if it WOULD be possible, it should not be done anyway. # It actually makes things harder to read, so I am also against this idea, too. But! It had to be published. :) I think I remember once a collection of evil code in a file called evil.rb. If I remember correctly, it may have been championed by flori ... something. I even forgot the name. But it was pretty fun. I don't remember if we could have shapechanging object but I like the idea in itself (if we had that? I think you could someone change the parent class ... somehow. Actually, this may not be totally useless, I still think it may be a nice idea to have things like a generic Button.new interface that gets translated properly into the different GUI toolsets and also for www code ... unify all the things!) Things like that with evil.rb are sorta fun - experiment with evil ideas that you should not use. There could be a whole type system added in it as well! Mandatory type system - things that make you unhappy when you use them. Since it is MANDATORY haha! :D And then, on top of that, a ruby-to-crystal compiler just for the fun of it (well, you write in ruby... and then just let it compile into some binary via crystal ... without having to write crystal on your own ... then you'd have the best of both worlds. Crystal feels heavier on my brain than ruby but if it gives me faster binaries OR if I can distribute code as a drop-out-exe for friends to use, this would be good! My friends tend to be noobs so making things as simple as possible is good. Also, I am much more a crystal noob than a ruby noob though I am also a ruby noob too. So the crystal idea, well, actually - would be nice if ruby itself would have that too. Like scripting languages that can be compiled! And run like on something like JVM just not needing java haha.) It's Caturday sorta, don't mind me. So actually, I think my second idea would be to have something like evil.rb again, in stdlib/core or so. We have some `GOTO` stuff too somewhere (I don't remember where ... it is probably too evil to google for it... but I did ... the variable `SUPPORT_JOKE`. We could also `SUPPORT_EVIL` yes! Or perhaps `SUPPORT_FUN` or something like that.) I don't remember if evil.rb was really used a lot by anyone else, but perhaps it would be fun to toy with crazy evil features - and you can not rely on them being made available either, they may disappear or re-appear! Anyway, don't take any of this too seriously please. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/