From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2007-07-04T03:08:28+09:00
Subject: Re: private method clarification, please

On 7/3/07, Tim Pease <tim.pease@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this behavior expected?
>
>
> $ cat t.rb
> class C
>   def meth1() private_method end
>   def meth2() self.private_method end
>   def private_method() puts 'you called?' end
>   private :private_method
> end
>
> c = C.new
> c.meth1
> c.meth2
>
> $ ruby --version
> ruby 1.8.5 (2006-12-25 patchlevel 12) [i386-cygwin]
>
> $ ruby t.rb
> you called?
> t.rb:3:in `meth2': private method `private_method' called for
> #<C:0x442fdd4> (NoMethodError)
>         from t.rb:10
>
>
> It seems distinctly strange to me that you cannot call a private
> method using the self semantics shown in meth2. Is this the expected
> behavior?

Hmm... I can't decide is it's strange or not.  I always think of using
self.whatever in methods as using 'external' access, in which case,
it's not surprising.  You can of course, send() through.

So yeah, I can see where that behaviour might seem surprising but it's
not particularly surprising to me.

-greg