From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-11-10T02:41:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Information Hiding

2007/11/9, arcadiorubiogarcia@gmail.com <arcadiorubiogarcia@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I'm quite new to Ruby, so please excuse me if this question is a bit
> silly.
>
> Consider:
>
> class Foo
>   def initialize
>    @a = []
>   end
>
>   def bar(p)
>     @a << p
>   end
> end
>
> It's nice that Ruby returns the last evaluated expression, without
> putting an explicit return. However, Foo#bar dangerously exposes the
> Foo class internals.
>
> My question is, what is the common idiom to avoid this? Simply adding
> a return nil? def bar(p); @a << p; return nil; end

In this case I'd do

def bar(x)
  @a << x
  self
end

Because then you can nicely chain calls to #bar.  Depending on
circumstances you might even consider implementing #<< instead of /
additionally to #bar.

Kind regards

robert

-- 
use.inject do |as, often| as.you_can - without end