Ruby

I was playing with Ruby tonight and thought up an interesting idea to make (({require})) a bit better, so you can load multiple files sequentially using one method call.

Currently, (({require})) supports one argument, and throws a (({TypeError})) if you pass an array:

 irb(main):001:0> require %w(json yaml) TypeError: can't convert Array into String 

However, there's a way to patch Kernel that makes it respond to multiple objects passed in an (({Array})).

 module Kernel @@require = method :require def require *args args.flatten! args.collect! do |a| raise ArgumentError.new "arguments to `require' must be strings or symbols" unless a.is_a?(String) || a.is_a?(Symbol) @@require.call a.to_s end args.length == 1 ? args.first : args end end 

The new behavior doesn't actually require the modification of any code that calls (({require})) (pretty much anything, really), and new code can take advantage of the new functionality instantly.

 irb> require %w(json yaml) => [true, false] irb> require :pp => false irb> require 'rails' => true irb> require %w(json yaml), :pp, 'rails' => [true, false, false, true] 

Thanks for considering this.