> Hi all,
>   I'm peering into irb's internals and am wondering what's the purpose
> of IRB.conf[:CONTEXT_MODE]? I understand most of the ruby code but all
> my googling has yet to bring up _anyone_ who uses this. Here is a link
> to the beginning of it's implementation in irb:http://github.com/akitaonrails/ruby191-stable-mirror/blob/c1a8d6cd2bd...

> To summarize the implementation, IRB.conf[:CONTEXT_MODE] can be set to
> one of 4 values: 0,1,2,3 (default is 3). Depending on the value, a
> binding is created for use when evaluating a line in irb:

> 0: eval("proc{binding}.call", TOPLEVEL_BINDING ...)
> 1: creates a binding to a temporary file
> 2: thread friendly binding from an irb file
> 3: eval("def irb_binding; binding; end; irb_binding",
> TOPLEVEL_BINDING ...)

> Right off the bat, I don't know the use cases for cases 1 and 2. Is a
> binding in a temporary file perhaps more secure? As for cases 0 and 3
> rue on irc helped me understand the difference between them: case 0
> the binding has access to local variables of TOPLEVEL_BINDING while
> case 3 doesn't. But when I grep in ruby's source, the only mention of
> TOPLEVEL_BINDING is in irb libs and erb.rb. So of what use is case 0
> when almost no libraries use TOPLEVEL_BINDING and when the binding
> could just very well be TOPLEVEL_BINDING itself?

> Thoughts, insights?
> Thanks,
> Gabriel