I was reading through the source of Artifice and saw:
module Artifice NET_HTTP = ::Net::HTTP # ... end line: https://github.com/wycats/artifice/blob/master/lib/artifice.rb#L6
Why not just do Net::HTTP instead of ::Net::HTTP, i.e., what does it mean when you use :: as a prefix?
The :: is the scope resolution operator. What it does is determines what scope a module can be found under. For example:
module Music module Record # perhaps a copy of Abbey Road by The Beatles? end module EightTrack # like Gloria Gaynor, they will survive! end end module Record # for adding an item to the database end To access Music::Record from outside of Music you would use Music::Record.
To reference Music::Record from Music::EightTrack you could simply use Record because it's defined in the same scope (that of Music).
However, to access the Record module responsible for interfacing with your database from Music::EightTrack you can't just use Record because Ruby thinks you want Music::Record. That's when you would use the scope resolution operator as a prefix, specifying the global/main scope: ::Record.
module A def self.method; "Outer"; end end module B module A def self.method; "Inner"; end end A.method # => "Inner" ::A.method # => "Outer" end On the specific case of Artifice, at line 41 of the file that you've shown is defined a inner Net module. To keep acess to the outer Net module, it uses ::Net.
:: prefixes to move to one more scope level or :: means the very top/global level? For ex.: ::::A.method (looks really weird). Thank you.A :: operator refers to the global scope instead of local.
