Is type conversion possible with inheritance in Ruby?

Question

I'm using Ruby, and writing classes with inheritance.

For example:

class Canine
  def initialize
  end

  def make_noise
    puts "whoosh whoosh"
  end
end

class Dog < Canine
  def initialize
  end

  def make_noise
    puts "wong wong"
    super
  end
end

Now I have a dog object:

jack = Dog.new

Is it possible to call the make_noise() method of Canine through the dog object?

In other languages it would be a typecast, something like:

(Canine)jack.make_noise

Note this is not Ruby syntax, hence, my question.

Is it possible to do this in Ruby? And if so, how?

Answer 1

You can do something like this:

Canine.instance_method(:make_noise).bind(jack).call

A better plan would be to just give the method in the super class an alias, or rename it.