Is it possible to turn a private method into a public one?

Ruby
1

hey guys !

could a private/protected method be turned into a public one ?

2

Lex W. wrote:

hey guys !

could a private/protected method be turned into a public one ?

class K
private
def m
end

now m is private

public :m

and now it is public

end

TPR.

3

Thomas B. wrote:

Lex W. wrote:

hey guys !

could a private/protected method be turned into a public one ?

class K
private
def m
end

now m is private

public :m

and now it is public

end

TPR.

Thank you ! This will come in handy !

4

Lex W. wrote:

Thank you ! This will come in handy !

Also, it’s possible to bypass the protection using the Object#send
method. This is useful for unit-testing private methods.

5

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Lex W. [email protected] wrote:

could a private/protected method be turned into a public one ?

Sure.

On the one hand you can circumvect access control with Object#send:

object.send(:method_name_even_if_private, …)

And yes, you indeed can change the visibility:

class C
  private
  def foo
    puts "it works"
  end
end

c = C.new
begin
  c.foo
rescue
  puts $!
  C.send(:public, :foo)
  c.foo
end
# =>
# private method `foo' called for #<C:0x22013c>
# it works

That public is similar to the private call in C, only done out of the
class and via #send because it is private.

It is interesting to note that we’ve been able to call the method on
an object that was created when #foo was private, as the raised
exception proves. That’s because method calls are resolved on a per
call basis due to the dynamic nature of Ruby.