From: Michael Jessop <candiazoo@...>
Date: 2005-08-31T05:26:23+09:00
Subject: Question about Inheritance

I have two simple classes.  One inherits from the other and calls 
"super()" in its initialize method.  But the super does not seem to do 
what I expect it to do.   I expect the super() to initialize two 
variables, but when I call the method to display the initialized 
errors, I do not get the value (it things @errmsg is nil).  Here they 
are:

class DBBase
  def initalize
    @failed = false
    @errmsg = 'n/a'
  end

  def clear
    @failed = false
    @errmsg = 'n/a'
  end

  def failure
    @failed
  end

  def success
    @failed != true
  end

  def error
    "Error:  #{@errmsg}"
  end

  def connect
    SQLite::Database.new(DBNAME)
  end

  attr_accessor :failed, :errmsg
end

(and here is the shortened version of the inheriting class)...

##  This class models the People table.  It allows the creation,
##  loading, modification and saving of a single person.

class Person < DBBase
  def initialize(id=nil, lname=nil, fname=nil, mname=nil, nname=nil, 
sex=nil, dob=nil)
    super()
    @id = id
    @lname = lname
    @fname = fname
    @mname = mname
    @nname = nname
    @sex = sex
    @dob = dob

    if @id != nil
      @added = false
    else
      @added = true
    end

    @modified = false
    @loaded = false
  end

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