From: chiaro scuro <kiaroskuro@...>
Date: 2006-02-28T23:35:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Subclassing Struct.new

On 2/28/06, Markus Werner <markus.werner+news@wobcom.de> wrote:
> Should it assign the local var "a" or should it call the method "a="?
> If you say that it should assign the local var "a" just if there is no
> method "a=".

thanks for pointing out the side effects of the other stylistic
choice. now it's much clearer why it was done this way.

> What happend to your code if some day in the future you or some else define
> a methode "a=" to write the ivar @a. And you don't remember that your
> method foo use a local var a?

my tests would fail, I guess.

I also program in VBA, where you have a 'property set' feature that is
roughly the equivalent of the 'name=' operator in Ruby and it has
never been a problem.  the few times this error slipped through, the
tests always caught it.

> What should happend in this case?
>
> def n
>   @n
> end
>
> def n=(n)
>     @n = n
> end

I guess the 'n' in '@n = n' would be the one most internally scoped,
i.e. the passed arg

--

-- Chiaroscuro --
Liquid Development Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/liquiddevelopment