From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-09-24T23:21:40+09:00
Subject: Re: self.puts?

Derek Chesterfield <dez@mac.com> wrote:
> On 24 Sep 2005, at 12:47pm, Stefan Lang wrote:
> 
>> On Saturday 24 September 2005 12:30, Derek Chesterfield wrote:
>> 
>>> how come the
>>> result of 'puts' is different to the result of 'self.puts'?
>> 
>> Ruby doesn't allow that a private method is called with an explicit
>> receiver. If you write "self.puts", "self" is an explicit receiver.
>> If you simply write "puts" the receiver is implicitly "self".
> 
> Ah - I knew it was semantics! Thanks for your explanation. It makes
> perfect sense now: because it is a private method, you *shouldn't*
> need to write it explicitly! This code also solidified it for me:
> 
>> $ irb
>> irb(main):001:0> module Kernel
>> irb(main):002:1> public :puts
>> irb(main):003:1> end
>> => Kernel
>> irb(main):004:0> puts "asd"
>> asd
>> => nil
>> irb(main):005:0> self.puts "asd"
>> asd
>> => nil
> 
> Thanks again!

Note also that you can call private methods with send:

self.send(:puts, "foo")

Kind regards

    robert