From: Lyle Johnson <ljohnson@...>
Date: 2001-07-20T03:41:20+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:18139] Re: Delphi like properties ?

> I want to implement a C extension for a GUI toolkit that supports
> the same magic properties like delphi.

Since you don't have to write the parentheses with a Ruby method invocation,
you can just define getter and setter instance methods for the class and use
those; e.g.

    cSomeClass = rb_define_class("SomeClass", cBaseClass);
    rb_define_method(cSomeClass, "text", SomeClass_getText, 0);
    rb_define_method(cSomeClass, "text=", SomeClass_setText, 1);

Note that the "getter" methods' names are just the corresponding property
names, and the "setters" are the same with an equals sign appended. To call
these methods from Ruby code, write:

    someClassInstance = SomeClass.new
    someClassInstance.text = "Fred"
    puts "The current text is #{someClassInstance.text}"

Hope this helps,

Lyle