Why does Ruby have Numeric.new?

Question

a = Numeric.new  # doesn't take an argument

I can't imagine a use case for this. Can you?

Answer 1

The Class class defines a new instance method. And so the new class method on Numeric is just a holdover from that - it doesn't do anything - think of it as one of those vestigial organs that animals inherit from a distant ancestor - like the appendix on humans.

Note that the subclasses of Numeric such as Fixnum and Float and their kin explictly undefine the new method. I guess they just didn't bother undefining it for Numeric as direct instances of this class never really exist, and it does no harm keeping it around.