Ruby Mapping for Structures

A Slice structure maps to a Ruby class with the same name. For each Slice data member, the Ruby class contains a corresponding instance variable as well as accessors to read and write its value. For example, here is our Employee structure once more:

Slice

struct Employee
{
    long number;
    string firstName;
    string lastName;
}

The Ruby mapping generates the following definition for this structure:

Ruby

class Employee
    def initialize(number=0, firstName='', lastName='')
        @number = number
        @firstName = firstName
        @lastName = lastName
    end

    def hash
        # ...
    end

    def ==
        # ...
    end

    def inspect
        # ...
    end

    attr_accessor :number, :firstName, :lastName
end

The constructor initializes each of the instance variables to a default value appropriate for its type:

Data Member Type	Default Value
`string`	Empty string
`enum`	First enumerator in enumeration
`struct`	Default-constructed value
Numeric	Zero
`bool`	False
`sequence`	Null
`dictionary`	Null
`class`/`interface`	Null

You can also declare different default values for members of primitive and enumerated types.

The compiler generates a definition for the hash method, which allows instances to be used as keys in a hash collection. The hash method returns a hash value for the structure based on the value of its data members.

The == method returns true if all members of two structures are (recursively) equal.

The inspect method returns a string representation of the structure.

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See Also