From: "weathercoach@..." <weathercoach@...>
Date: 2007-08-16T07:30:16+09:00
Subject: newby: class getter proper use help

   Hello.
  I'm an aspiring ruby hobbyist.   I've finally got my head around
some basic class usage and use of setter/getter methods.   However
I've recently bumped into the threshold of my understanding.  My query
here relates to trying to further my understanding of classes and
class methods.

   In the following example.  Defining the instance variable "@link"
does
not require anything beyond associating it with the nlink value from
the File.stat.

class FileStats
  def initialize(f)
    @@s = File.stat(f)
    @link = @@s.nlink
  end

  attr_accessor :link
end

f = FileStats.new("/etc/services")
puts f.link

  In this example the infomation I want cannot be simply retreived
from a subset of the File.stat so I create a method called "user".
This method provides the warning "warning: method redefined;
discarding old user" during execution because I already defined the
"user" method with my attr_accesor line.   So I think my questions
are.

  1.   Am I over thinking this and I should just remove the "user"
method
  from attr_accessor?
  2.   Should I include my "user" method within the "initialize"
method?



require 'etc'

class FileStats
  def initialize(f)
    @@s = File.stat(f)
    @link = @@s.nlink
  end

  attr_accessor :user,  :link

  def user
    begin
    @user = Etc.getpwuid(@@s.uid).name
      rescue
        @user = @@s.uid.to_s
    end
  end

f = FileStats.new("/etc/services")
puts f.user
puts f.link


  TIA.  G.