class_eval better than reopening classes?

[Alex Wayne]

I came accross this snippet from the docrails project

"When monkey-patching existing classes it's often better to use
`class_eval` instead of opening the class directly."

From this commit:
http://github.com/lifo/docrails/commit/60e37868e40ac11f07cbda81f24dcdb0a9c68783#L0R275

First of all, is this right? And second, why? Does it make a
difference if this is a in the context of a rails plugin?
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Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[Frederick Cheung]

On May 30, 9:50 pm, Alex Wayne <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>
wrote:

> I came accross this snippet from the docrails project
>
>   "When monkey-patching existing classes it's often better to use
> `class_eval` instead of opening the class directly."
>

> From this commit:http://github.com/lifo/docrails/commit/60e37868e40ac11f07cbda81f24dcd...

http://ola-bini.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamically-created-methods-in-ruby.html
says the opposite

Fred