From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2004-12-09T03:08:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Freezing Variable Assignment

On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 01:32:33 +0900, itsme213 <itsme213@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> "Florian Gross" <flgr@ccan.de> wrote in message
> news:31mf3tF3ebu1mU3@individual.net...
>> itsme213 wrote:
>>> I was talking about the pure object model part of Ruby. In such
>>> a pure object model, a[1] and a[2] are instance variables (some
>>> Smalltalk descriptions calls these 'indexed instance variables'
>>> as opposed to 'named instance variables'). How something is
>>> optimized in C is a different matter.
>> Please call this Object state ("as in a[1] and a[2] are part of
>> Object state" / "@foo is part of Object state") instead. It's a
>> more general term and seems to already be well-established.
> Perhaps.
> 
> Though it's hard to say "object x has states a, b" when you mean
> "object x has instance variables a, b". Or "object x has states 1,
> 2, 3" when you mean "object x has indexed variables (indices?) 1,
> 2, 3".


No, it isn't. It is very easy to say that "object x has a state
of instance variables @a and @b" or "object x has a state of indexes
1, 2, and 3". Frankly, I don't think that a common term is useful or
necessary. Array and Hash objects are fundamentals; everything else
uses instance variables.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca