From: Tim Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2007-11-20T09:29:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Assignment without attr=

Greg Willits wrote:
> Not even sure what to call this for the thread subject
> 
> I want to create a class which is a simple packed set of digits (as a
> string) as the one and only attribute of the class. There will be
> several methods to extract chunks from and format this string, but
> there's only the one attribute.
> 
> For the life of me I can't figure out how to to populate the dang this
> to start with, without have to go through an attribute. If it were a
> normal multi-attribute object, I'm fine, but in light of there only
> being one attribute, I'm trying to work with it a different way. Maybe
> I'm just going about it all wrong to start with?
> 
> The essentials:
> 
> class PackedNumber
>   def initialize
>     @packedNumber
>   end
> 
>   def methodX
>     ...
>   end
> 
>   def methodY
>     ...
>   end
> end
> 
> So, I'd want to work with it like this:
>    whatever = PackedNumber.new('12345')
> Or
>    whatever = PackedNumber.new
>    whatever = '12345'  # but I don't want whatever to be String
> 
> I'm trying to avoid the obvious, and maybe this is what is not possible
>   whatever.packedNumber = '12345'
> 
> I tried creating a method just for = but that didn't fly
> 
> def =(chars)
>    @packedNumber = chars
> end
> 
> Feels pretty lame I can't see this, but there ya go.
> 
> -- gw

maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but why not just take the 
initial value as an argument to initialize?

class PackedNumber
    def initialize(packed_number)
       @packedNumber = packed_number
    end
    # other stuff
end

pn = PackedNumber.new('12345')


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