From: Christoph Rippel <crippel@...>
Date: 2001-03-06T05:57:27+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:12059] Re: RCR: shortcut for instance variable initialization

> From: Ben Tilly [mailto:ben_tilly@hotmail.com]
[...]
> Well if not duplicating the names is the point, you could
> always make the temporary variables have names that have
> nothing to do with the variables you are actually setting.
> 
> /duck
> 
> OK, ok, on to a more serious note.  I don't have a good
> suggested syntax, but how about we generalize the desire
> for a second and think about where that leads?  If you
> have written your attr methods, your temporary variables
> actually all correspond pretty closely to methods that
> you have already.  For instance:
> 
>   attr_accessor :foo
> 
> will have created methods foo and foo= for public access to
> @foo.
> 
> Am I right that you would be happy if you could just call
> foo= directly?
As usual,

you make one of the most interesting comments 
(for my taste;-). Actually there is a little
problem if have something like 

class Whatever

def will_be_rounded=(number)
	raise 'Not a number' unless kind_of? Numeric
	@will_be_number = number.round
end

def initialize(will_be_rounded@)
	...
end
attr_accessor :will_be_rounded
end

does a call to initialize invoke ``@will_be_rounded=''
or```will_be_rounded=''? 

    
> I can't think of what it should look like, but there might
> be a number of uses for a syntax that allows you to easily
> preprocess your argument list in a variety of ways.  (One
> idea bubbling in my brain is named function parameters.)
> 
> So can anyone think of more uses for the idea or (far more
> importantly) what a reasonable syntax might be?

I am pretty neutral about this RCR but one way might 
be the introduction of additional ``#initialize's'' - 
maybe something like 

def initialized(initialize_me; dont_initialize_me)
...
end

but you still have the problem about the ambiguity of the 
``initialize_me='' invocation.

Ps. I sometimes wonder if Ruby could have done without
variables at all (I believe this) and only use attributes 
but this is a different matter.

[...]

Christoph