From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: 2007-05-09T09:40:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Funny doc for setter

On Sun, 06 May 2007 01:56:18 +0900, John Joyce wrote:

> Is it just me or is this funny?
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------- Object#instance_variable_set
>       obj.instance_variable_set(symbol, obj)    => obj
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>       Sets the instance variable names by _symbol_ to _object_, thereby
>       frustrating the efforts of the class's author to attempt to
> provide
>       proper encapsulation. The variable did not have to exist prior to
>       this call.

Yeah, but it doesn't expose anything that didn't already exist in Ruby. 
If the function didn't exist, you could write it yourself:

class Object
  def instance_variable_set symbol, obj
    eval "@#{symbol}=obj"
  end
end

--Ken

-- 
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/