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In this answer I've read about ppp.rb. It is mentioned as "well-known", but can't find anything about it on Google.

I found it interesting and I've adapted it to build my own version of caller_binding.

But, for my knowledge, what is ppp.rb? What does "ppp" stand for? Where do I find info about it?

Community
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Sony Santos
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  • In fairness the OP describes it as 'well known' in a fairly offhand way. I've been using Ruby for 5 years now and never heard of it, Google yields nothing except this question. – Chris Mowforth Jul 30 '11 at 16:22

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A search of Japanese sites via Google Translate reveals many blog posts and conversations about it. Apparently the author's page is here:

http://www.rubyist.net/~rubikitch/computer/ppp/

It appears to have been written in 2006, and not updated since. Most of the conversations are in the 2006-7 time frame.

So I'd say the OP's definition of "well-known" may be limited to Japan circa 2006-2007 :)

Mark Thomas
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    Thank you! From translation of the author's page, PPP is "Powerful `p`". I've downloaded `ppp-1.0.0.tar.gz` from the author's page and read the sources, which requires `pp` from stardard library. [`pp` is PrettyPrint](http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/pp/rdoc/files/pp_rb.html). So, PPP is for "Powerful PrettyPrint". – Sony Santos Jul 30 '11 at 18:47
  • It used to be [Big in Japan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_in_Japan_%28phrase%29)! – Andrew Grimm Jul 31 '11 at 23:53
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Excuse me for the confusion, but it was really well-known for its hack value at the time. One reason is because the original author is a core Ruby hacker - so everyone who was following major Ruby hacker blogs at that time knew about it.

The only problem was that it depended on Ruby's bug (not sure which one), so it quickly faded away once the bug was fixed. It's no wonder recent Ruby programmers never heard about it.

My version does not depend on a bug, but had problem with 1.9.[012] due to different bug in Ruby (#4347 - I think this is fixed with 1.9.3). So original worked because Ruby had a bug, and new version did not because of it :-)

Taisuke Yamada
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