From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2005-09-12T08:32:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Misunderstanding of instance variables

Matthew D Moss wrote:

>Okay, so the above basically works. But I wondered why the author I
>borrowed this from used "self." instead of @ -- I thought both would
>essentially reference an instance variable.
>
>So I replaced the one line to look like this:
>         @content_type = arg.content_type.chomp
>and it fails, triggering my validation checks.
>  
>
self.content_type = blahblahblah is an invocation of an instance method 
named "content_type=". In typical implementations of this method*, 
invocation causes an instance variable @content_type to be set. In the 
case of ActiveRecord, I guess that's not the case.

Devin
*see attr_writer