Magic Methods in Ruby?

Question

Ruby enthusiasts! I am trying to write a DSL in ruby and i would like to be able to create some magic methods (not sure that is the most accurate term for what i want).

I would like to be able to do things like the following:

a = [1, 2, 3]
b = 2

(a contains b)

And have it resolve to true or false.

Essentially, how can i define the function "contains" so that it takes an array a and a variable b and performs a.contains?(b), but without all of the associated ruby-specific syntax?

Answer 1

if you want a DSL that doesn't use ruby syntax, you need to write a parser at the very least to perform the transformation (raganwalds rewrite lib might be a starting point, http://github.com/raganwald/rewrite)

That said, you don't want to do this. This is more code to maintain and Ruby has already made a lot of the tough decisions that make writing a language syntax hard. Natural language programming also isn't much easier for nonprogrammers to use as the exactness of the format is the challenging aspect (see applescript for instance).