From: Colin Summers <bladenut@...>
Date: 2007-06-15T06:25:05+09:00
Subject: severe newbie question (class, fixnum, array)

I worked a lot in tcl, and this is my first day of trying something in
Ruby. Second, maybe.

class Thread
  def initialize number
    @number = number ; #
    @replies = 0 ;
  end ; # initialize

  def filename
    dirname = "./data/" ; # the directory where the files are kept
    filename = dirname + @number.toS + "-" + @replies.toS + ".html"
    return filename
  end ; # filename

end ; # Thread definition

puts "Finished definitions."

thread[1727] = Thread.new 1727

puts "The filename would be: "
puts thread[1727].filename


Of course, that doesn't work. It is unhappy with the code to create
the filename, since .toS is not a method for fixnum (which apparently
is what @number is, but I never TOLD it that was a fixnum).

And I can't seem to define "thread" to be an array of class Thread
objects. I want to refer to thread[1702] and thread[291] and hop
around like that.

(And, perhaps a more advanced question, right now I am making the
thread number part of the object, ultimately for a gorgeous bit of
code it seems like the object should just know the index of the array
instead, so if I ask thread[32] what it's filename is it would know
that it is thread #32. Can it do that?)

Thanks. I know it's a basic question. It's been a decade since I
learned a new language. I gotta get out more.

--Colin