From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2005-08-25T11:04:07+09:00
Subject: Re: determining the attribute names of an object

Mark Volkmann wrote:
> Ah ... thanks for the explanation!  Had I been paying attention, I
> would have understood the distinction between attributes and instance
> variables from reading pages 32-33 in Pickaxe 2.
> 
> That still leaves the question of why Structs have "members" instead
> of "instance variables" and why OpenStructs have neither.

Well, Structs are not implemented by using instance variables (well,
they are, but not the way you'd expect).

If I were doing it, I would implement Structs so that there was a
one-to-one correspondence between members and instance variables.
Then this wouldn't be an issue.

As for OpenStruct... have you looked at the code?  :)

Its author commented once that it was something he threw together
in a few minutes as a toy, and it was amazing how many people
used it.

Issues like this led me to create SuperStruct -- but beware, it has
bugs. If there is enough interest in it, I'll fix it.


Hal