From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2006-03-01T12:16:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Confused about "private"??

Hi,

In message "Re: Confused about "private"??"
    on Wed, 1 Mar 2006 10:56:57 +0900, "John N. Alegre" <info@johnalegre.net> writes:

|I guess I will NOT open old wounds;) but I am not comfortable with Ruby's
|use of "private".  I do not see what it accomplishes by not letting me call
|a private method within an object by using the self reference.  I was
|raised on Smalltalk and have come to habitually use self when I refer to
|the insides of an Object.  With Ruby I have to now be conscious NOT to do
|that.

Unlike Smalltalk, Ruby has methods to be called like functions in
other languages, for example, "print".  They are set private to avoid
confusion.

							matz.