The above statement asserts that the ruby usage is incorrect but terms evolve and that s not always a bad thing.
Ruby monkey patch class method.
Intro to monkey patching in ruby.
Ruby has a very beautiful syntax and so it can be tempting to monkey patch a class to turn some ugly method call into something that is more readable.
3 aspects of this code are likely to change in the next release.
Motivated by the intent to patch existing third party code as a workaround to a bug or feature.
Every app with core patches feels a little bit different.
Pass dummy class x foo foo bar lambda self.
This can cause unintended side effects or breakage of programs.
This is called a monkey patch.
You have to know where your monkey patches live.
In the above class you are changing the behavior of the class method defined in the same program file.
42 print x bar but you can t do this for certain built in classes like int or float.
Unfortunately the scope of such changes is global.
All users of the monkey patched class see the same changes.
For example you often see monkey patches that simply add a convenience method that has no side effect.
In ruby a monkey patch mp is any dynamic modification to a class and is often used as a synonym for dynamically modifying any class add new or overwrite existing methods at runtime.
Monkey patching changes the behavior of class methods.
So you have to have a way to quickly learn those changes when you jump into a new codebase.
With that in mind let s look at a completely contrived example.
The linking of a new method to the existing class method name happens at runtime.
So the behavior of the class monkey is changed dynamically.
Patches go into lib core.
These classes methods are implemented in c and there are certain abstractions sacrificed in order to make the implementation easier and more efficient.
In ruby the term monkey patch was misunderstood to mean any dynamic modification to a class and is often used as a synonym for dynamically modifying any class at runtime.
When you monkey patch core classes you add to the core ruby apis.
Due to ruby s open classes you can redefine or add functionality to existing classes.
2 monkey patched java methods are only available in ruby code.
There s no good reason to do this sort of patching because jruby marshals strings between java and ruby.
