From: Justin Collins <justincollins@...>
Date: 2007-11-20T09:37:06+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')
>   
def initialize(num = nil)
  @packedNumber = num
end

> Or
>    whatever = PackedNumber.new
>    whatever = '12345'  # but I don't want whatever to be String
>
>   

I don't think you can do this.

> 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
>
>   
But you could do

def set(chars)
  @packedNumber = chars
end

whatever = PackedNumber.new

whatever.set '12345'


or if you want it even shorter, less 'method-call-like'

def [] num
  @packedNumber = num
end

whatever['12345']

-Justin