From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2001-08-31T22:58:50+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:20628] Re: Weird things with eval

Paul Brannan <pbrannan@atdesk.com> writes:

> Why, though, if I do:
> 
>   class Foo
>   end
> 
>   def bar
>     puts 'bar'
>   end
> 
>   Foo.bar
> 
> do I get:
> 
>   NameError: private method `bar' called for Foo:Class

Because a bare method definition makes 'bar' a private method of
Object. Object is a parent of Foo, so when you call Foo.bar, it finds
it, but then can't use it.


Try

   def fred
   end

   p Object.private_instance_methods


This is one of the very clever things in Ruby: getting the semantics
of conventional procedures without breaking the OO paradigm.


Dave