Why .send?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi all,

Could anyone tell me why you use .send when callling "include" in rails plugins??

E.g.   ActiveRecord::Base.send :include, SomeClass::ClassMethods

Cheers, Dan

2

danfrost wrote:

Could anyone tell me why you use .send when callling "include" in rails plugins??

E.g.   ActiveRecord::Base.send :include, SomeClass::ClassMethods

Take it out and see.

.include is protected or private or something. send() just says "shut up and do exactly what I say, b----!"

3

Thanks - nice answer.

So, ".send" by-passes all private / protected restrictions?

4

danfrost wrote: > Thanks - nice answer.

> So, ".send" by-passes all private / protected restrictions?

In 1.8, definitely. In 1.9...I think I read somewhere that it didn't any more. Don't quote me on that, though. If it's used in the rails plugins, that wouldn't really make sense.

1.9 was like that for a while (with a separate send! that still ignored whether a method was private/protected) but that was eventually removed.

Fred