Ruby - Subclassing array to make it randomize when flattened
- by Markus O'Reilly
I'm trying to subclass Array in ruby to make it randomize its elements when flatten! is called. Looking at the source code for Array#flatten (http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Array.src/M002218.html), it looks like it should recursively call flatten! on any array contained within an array. So, I tried doing something like this:
class RandArray < Array
def randomize!
self.sort!{rand(3)-1}
end
def flatten!
randomize!
super
end
end
However, when a normal array contains my RandArray and flatten is called on the normal array, flatten! is never called in my array. I figure ruby is just calling some other method to flatten the arrays recursively, but I can't figure out what that is. Any tips?