From: Diogo Lisboa <diogoslisboa@...>
Date: 2008-11-28T09:57:11+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:20144] Re: [Bug #797] bug or feature: local method ?

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 4:32 PM, Francoys <francois.pr@videotron.ca> wrote:
> declaring variables inside a method that are accessibles to all the
> nested methods.

This isn't possible though.

def foo
  bar = 10
  def gazonk
    p bar
  end
end

>> gazonk # => undefined local variable or method `gazonk'
>> foo  # => nil
>> gazonk # => undefined local variable or method `bar'


This doesn't work because the chained method is in a whole new scope
which doesn't know anything about the outer method's local variables.

But, however odd this functionality is, I think it would be useful for
the enclosing method to inherit the outer scope. You'd get something
like named closures, and calling `gazonk' after `foo' would be able to
print 10.

However, this wouldn't be consistent, meaning, it should have to work
if you declared a local variable in a class definition and all the
methods would be aware of that; at this point, things get ugly.

I think the idea of 'named closure' could be interesting (I don't know
what consequences this would have, but sounds like a feature more than
a bug). It beats returning lambdas in an array.

Would you, enlightened ones, share your opinions on this? On the idea
of the local methods being a bug or feature, I don't think they count
much as a feature the way they currently are.


Diogo