Simple Ruby reference

It's a really simple reference implementation, used in failirc.

>> require 'refr'
true
>> lol = 2
2
>> ref = Reference{:lol}
2
>> ref =~ "what"
"what"
>> lol
"what"

This is useful especially in an event dispatcher, you can use a reference object as it was the real object, the only stolen methods are: ___get_referenced___, ___set_referenced___, ~ and =~, everything else is sent to the referenced object.

You can also create a reference to an object directly with Reference.[]

Or you can use the Kernel#Reference helper to achieve both.

There are some situations where the Reference object doesn't work exactly as the object it's referencing, this cases are most likely related to C methods, when this happens just remember to use the ~ method on the reference to get the referenced object.

• In the case statement when comparing for the object's class it doesn't work due to Module#=== being implemented in C.

• IO#== and IO#=== don't work as expected, this happens to be a problem when using Array#delete with a referenced IO object.
  If you want to compare an IO object to a Reference:IO you have to do ref == io and not io == ref or it won't work correctly.
  Keep in mind that if the thing you compare with is a Reference:IO too you're not going to get what you're expecting, the comparing value has to be a real IO object.

• Same of IO#== happens for Symbol

• Some weird problems seem to happen when returning a Reference from a to_s method.

If you find any other situations where it's not working as expected open an issue or send me an email and I'll add it here.