Ruby » Ruby master

Feature #9992

Updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) over 10 years ago

 Hi, 
 
 
 
  I’m would like to discuss with you the concept of Internal Interfaces. 
 
 
 
  Currently ruby offers three access modifiers choices to set methods visibility: 

 
  - public 
 
  - protected 
 
  - private 

 
 
  Public methods define what we may call the Public Interface. 
 
  Private methods are private to the class and its subclasses. 
 
  Protected methods are public for the subclasses. 
 
 
 
  I would like to work with a new access modifier that would allow the creation of Internal methods. 
 
 
 
  Internal methods would be object methods that could only be called within the namespace. 
 
 
 
  Ex: 

 ~~~ruby 
 module Foo; end 

 
 
  class Foo::Bar 
   
    def baz  
       
        puts ‘baz’ 
   
     end 
   
     internal :baz 
 
  end 

 
 
  class Foo::Qux 
   
    def baz 
      
       ::Foo::Bar.new.baz 
   
    end 
 
  end 
 ~~~ 

 
 
  Is this something that we can think about in a future implementation of ruby? 
 
  An extra feature that would not break backward compatibility. 
 
 
 
  Cheers, 
 
  Daniel

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