From: Matthew Desmarais <desmarm@...>
Date: 2005-12-14T02:31:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Private attribute or accessor?

Sam Kong wrote:

>Hi!
>
>See the following codes.
>
>[1]
>class C
>  attr_accessor :a
>  def f(v)
>    @a = v
>    ...
>  end
>end
>
>[2]
>class C
>  attr_accessor :a
>  def f(v)
>    a = v
>    ...
>  end
>end
>
>
>[1] and [2] work exactly same.
>I wonder which way is more proper.
>
>In my opinion, if there're accessors (getter and setter), using them in
>the class is better than directly accessing the instance data.
>However, most codes I've seen access the data directly.
>
>What do you think?
>
>Sam
>  
>
Hi Sam,

Just a quick point: your examples don't work the same way.  In [2], 
you'll want to replace a = v with self.a = v.

Regards,
Matthew