From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-08-02T06:33:33+09:00
Subject: Re: I thought this was the one that worked?

On Wed, Aug 02, 2006 at 06:00:07AM +0900, ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Aug 2006, Chad Perrin wrote:
> 
> >>it's not that there is no 'a', it's that there is no enclosing scope.  the
> >>beginning of the 'def' introduces a new scope that is not 'contained' by 
> >>the
> >>previous one.  this is basic ruby.
> >
> >. . .
> >
> >What does that have to do with anything?
> 
> because in the original code
> 
>   a = 42
> 
>   def m
>     puts a
>   end
> 
> 'a' will only be lexically scoped - and throw and error of course.  the
> previous def of 'a' is totally superfluous - i was just pointing out that 
> the
> failure of ruby to find 'a' is going to be a failure of lexical scoping 
> rules
> because there is no enclosing scope (well nothing named in it yet) where an
> 'a' is defined.

Ahh, I see where you were going.  You were demonstrating that the "a" in
the scope of "m" is separate from the "a" outside of it, but didn't
really explicitly state that.  I have a tendency to forget that def
creates a "new top level" scope, and need reminders.

I'm relieved to discover that Ruby isn't defaulting to dynamic scope in
the previous example after all.  Thanks for the explanation.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.