From: Vincent Foley <vfoley@...>
Date: 2005-04-30T06:14:36+09:00
Subject: Could you tell me if this is good meta programming style?

Hi everyone,

I finished playing yet another game of Chrono Trigger the other day,
and I thought I would look at how I could implement a simple Character
system in Ruby.  I have the following initialize method, but I would
like to be sure it's not extremely bad style:

class Character
  attr_accessor :strength, :magic, :defense, :magic_defense

  def initialize(args = {})
    args.each do |k, v|
      instance_variable_set("@#{k}", v) if respond_to?(k)
    end

    methods.grep(/\w=$/).each { |setter|
      getter = setter[0..-2]
      if send(getter).nil?
        send(setter, 0)
      end
    }
  end
end

So, if I added a :critical_rate accessor, I wouldn't need to modify
anything else in the initialize method.  Also, I don't want nil in any
attribute.  Is this good style?  Are there other (maybe better) ways to
accomplish this?  Thank you.