From: Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality <ihatespam@...>
Date: 2007-09-23T07:35:06+09:00
Subject: Weird variable scope behaviour...

    I just wrote some code that shouldn't have worked, in my estimation, but 
it did, anyway.  While this was a pleasant surprise, I prefer to understand 
why things don't work than to wonder why they did work...

    What was happening is this situation, here:


if false
    variable = true
end

if variable
    #do something
end


    To my surprise, this is okay!  Even though the code in the first 
if-clause  doesn't get run, the variable in the clause gets created, 
anyway...
    Now, I'm pretty sure this is expected behaviour.  What I'm wondering is 
how people feel about this.  This behaviour makes me feel uneasy.  If I'm 
using a variable that hasn't been deliberately created then I'd rather have 
the interpreter complain that I haven't created the variable, as planned, 
than to be confused as to why my variable is nil.
    I'm very interested to hear other opinions on the subect.  Anyone care 
to comment?
    Thank you...