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Ruby include vs. extend

Ruby

I learned a valuable lesson about Ruby this morning - if you have a module of shared code in Ruby:

  module SharedStuff
    def log
      puts "log"
    end
  end

then:

  • include makes the module's methods available to an instance of the class
  • extend makes the methods available to the class itself

This means that by using the same base code, you can add them in as class methods with the extend directive, and as instance methods with the include directive.

Totally 'Ruby', as it's a strange, massive difference that might be missed by new users of the language.

Glad I Learned it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2012 at 8:22 am and is filed under Coding, Cube Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.