From: Nikolai Weibull <now@...>
Date: 2009-02-24T00:48:50+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:22371] Re: Surprising behavior in inheritance

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 16:03, Eero Saynatkari <ruby-ml@kittensoft.org> wrote:
> Excerpts from Nikolai Weibull's message of Mon Feb 23 16:53:26 +0200 2009:
>> Am I the only one surprised by this behavior?
>>
>> class A
>>   def a
>>     puts 'A#a'
>>   end
>>   protected :a
>> end
>>
>> class B < A
>>   def a
>>     puts 'B#a'
>>   end
>> end
>>
>> B.new.a # prints B#a
>>
>> I figured that B#a would be protected too.

> You overrode the inherited method with a public one. Seems correct?

Yes, that's perhaps what some would expect, but certainly not what I'd
expect.  I realize that the implementation is per method per class, as
David pointed out, but it came as a surprise to me.  I haven't found
any documentation that describes how visibility and inheritance
interact in this case.