Autocarga perversa

Textualmente, la rdoc del core de ruby, dice asi:

mod.const_missing(sym) => obj

Invoked when a reference is made to an undefined constant in mod. It is passed a symbol for the undefined constant, and returns a value to be used for that constant. The following code is a (very bad) example: if reference is made to an undefined constant, it attempts to load a file whose name is the lowercase version of the constant (thus class Fred is assumed to be in file fred.rb). If found, it returns the value of the loaded class. It therefore implements a perverse kind of autoload facility.

 def Object.const_missing(name)
   @looked_for ||= {}
   str_name = name.to_s
   raise "Class not found: #{name}" if @looked_for[str_name]
   @looked_for[str_name] = 1
   file = str_name.downcase
   require file
   klass = const_get(name)
   return klass if klass
   raise "Class not found: #{name}"
 end

Esa funcion puede utilizarse para implementar "alguna clase perversa de mecanismo de autocarga", para citar un ejemplo, rails lo utiliza como parte de su funcionamiento habitual para recargar las clases automaticamente sin necesidad de reiniciar el servidor ni ejecutar ningun comando explicito (¿rails = perversion?, esto me emociona).

links

http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Module.html#M001693

http://www.google.com.ar/search?q=%22It+therefore+implements+a+perverse+kind+of+autoload+facility%22