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If you’re new to metaprogramming in Ruby and you’d like to start nursing a deep understanding for it, I’ve written a detailed article dissecting metaclasses. It’s all based on the following code, which I call Metaid.

 class Object
   # The hidden singleton lurks behind everyone
   def metaclass; class << self; self; end; end
   def meta_eval &blk; metaclass.instance_eval &blk; end

   # In class definitions, methods are added to the metaclass
   # of the class being defined.
   def meta_def name, &blk
     metaclass.instance_eval { define_method name, &blk }
   end

   # Just defines a class method
   def class_def name, &blk
     class_eval { define_method name, &blk }
   end
 end

The article contains a lot of stuff I excluded from chapter six of my cartoon Ruby book because it was just getting too specific for the common reader.