From: Alex Young <alex@...>
Date: 2007-11-08T03:13:01+09:00
Subject: Re: :: and .

joey eisma wrote:
> hi!
> 
> reading through some tutorial, i noticed the author would interchange using :: and . to call methods. i see they both give the same result.
> 
> i was wondering if there is any other difference between the two? (other than convenience maybe?). when would you use one over the other?
> 
In addition to the other answers, there's one place that you can only 
use '::' rather than '.', and that's when you're specifying that your 
constant should be searched for in the root namespace:

Bar = 42
module Foo
   Bar = 23
   def Foo.show
     p ::Bar
     p Bar
   end
end

Foo.show outputs:
42
23

-- 
Alex