Feature #12495: Make "private" return the arguments again, for chaining

• Status: Feedback
• Priority: Normal
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -

[herwinw (Herwin Quarantainenet)]

Ruby 2.1 introduced the feature to make def foo return the symbol, so this could be used by things like private (see #3753):

private def foo() end

You could use the same method to create your own decorators (name borrowed from Python)

def cached(name)
  # Rewrite method to include a cache
  return name
end

private cached def foo() end

Currently, this would work but cached private def foo() would not. private (and all other modifier functions) return the class on which it was called. It would be nice to exterminate those order-dependencies.

The attached patch fixes this. It includes three modes:

No arguments: return nil:

private
  def foo() end

One argument: return the symbol. The would be the most common use case for this example.

private def foo() end
private :bar

Multiple arguments: return an array of the arguments:

private :foo, :bar

[herwinw (Herwin Quarantainenet)]

The patch is written for Ruby 2.3.1, just because the tests were broken in trunk.

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Status changed from Open to Feedback

Only private, not public, protected and module_function?

Herwin Quarantainenet wrote:

The patch is written for Ruby 2.3.1, just because the tests were broken in trunk.

How broken?

[herwinw (Herwin Quarantainenet)]

Only private, not public, protected and module_function?

private, public and protected all use set_visibility, that's where the change is implemented, private was just used as an example. module_function/rb_mod_modfunc has not been updated, but that's an easy fix.

How broken?

Something with the openssl tests. Travis showed them red as well, but thinks it's okay by now. The comment was intended to justify any file offsets, further discussion about it would be rather irrelevant to this case.