Ruby: Extending Net::IMAP to include additional commands?

Is it possible to extend a base class to include additional commands? For example, lets say I have a custom IMAP server that supports a command called "WUNTEE"... I would like to use the private Net::IMAP::send_command 开发者_运维问答method to send "WUNTEE", but since its private, how would that be possible? Is that even possible? Thanks.

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You can either subclass it as required, which is perfectly acceptable, or patch the base class with the new methods you want. From a design standpoint, a subclass is a cleaner approach, but you may find that some of the other related classes use Net::IMAP directly and getting them to use your specific version is tricky or impractical.

It's actually pretty straight-forward to patch out any methods you don't like with your own implementation by simply re-defining them at any point in the execution of your program.