# Re: final/closed classes in Ruby (was: Sharp knives and glue

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-final-closed-classes-in-ruby-was-sharp-knives-and-glue/94718>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 11, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-final-closed-classes-in-ruby-was-sharp-knives-and-glue/94718 "2006-05-11T23:59:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-final-closed-classes-in-ruby-was-sharp-knives-and-glue/94718/1 "2006-05-11T23:59:35Z")

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> -----Original Message-----  
> From: Tanner B. [[mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)]  
> Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 3:50 PM  
> To: ruby-talk ML  
> Subject: Re: final/closed classes in Ruby (was: Sharp knives and glue)

> But any solution you can put into place with pure ruby, can  
> be circumvented just as easily. 🙂

True, but if someone goes out of their way to circumvent your protection  
mechanisms, the egg is entirely on their face if something goes wrong as  
a result. I consider things like private, protected, etc, to be  
advisory, not absolute. You break it, you bought it, and all that.

You can circumvent such constructs in other languages as well. Consider  
‘#define private public’. \>:)

Regards,

Dan

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**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 12:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-final-closed-classes-in-ruby-was-sharp-knives-and-glue/94718/2 "2006-05-12T00:08:42Z")

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On May 11, 2006, at 4:58 PM, Berger, Daniel wrote:

> ‘#define private public’. \>:)

Arguably, that is not C but a preprocessor macro. The same thing  
could be done by including Ruby code and preprocessing using a Ruby  
script (interesting…).

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**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 1:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-final-closed-classes-in-ruby-was-sharp-knives-and-glue/94718/3 "2006-05-12T13:19:21Z")

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“Berger, Daniel” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:

> You can circumvent such constructs in other languages as well. Consider  
> ‘#define private public’. \>:)

IIRC, they found that in early OpenOffice header files. 😉