When you send a message to a Ruby object, Ruby looks for a method to invoke with the same name as the message you sent. (There are a bunch of different ways to send the message, but the most common one is just obj.method_name. But you can make the fact that you are sending a message explicit by using obj.send(:method_name)). First it looks in the current self object’s own instance methods. Then it looks in the list of instance methods that all objects of that class share, and then in each of the included modules of that class, in reverse order of inclusion. Then it looks in that class’s superclass, and then in the superclass’s included modules, all the way up until it reaches the class Object. If it still can’t find a method, the very last place it looks is in the Kernel module, included in the class Object. And there, if it comes up short, it calls method_missingYou can override method_missing anywhere along that method lookup path, and tell Ruby what to do when it can’t find a method.
