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List:       ruby-talk
Subject:    Re: Constant Hash strangeness
From:       "Austin Ziegler" <halostatue () gmail ! com>
Date:       2006-05-31 19:47:02
Message-ID: 9e7db9110605311247i7dc639fbue91783c4301b9099 () mail ! gmail ! com
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On 5/31/06, Wiktor Macura <wmacura@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> This seems to be trivial, yet I can't find an explanation for it
> anywhere online. Apologies if I'm asking the obvious.
>
> If you create a constant hash:
>
>      CONSTANTHASH = { :foo => "foobar" }
>      x = CONSTANTHASH[:foo]
>      x << "-suffix"
>      p CONSTANTHASH
>
> One gets the following output:
>
>      { :foo => "foobar-suffix" }
>      nil
>
> So, this sort of makes sense if one considers that variables in Ruby
> are references. So Ruby only protects the hash, not the values keys in
> the hash point to. But... is there any way to protect the values, and
> not just the keys?

Constants don't work the way that you think they do. I'll be posting
an article about this soon; I just haven't decided where to put it.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca

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