From: Sebastian Hungerecker <sepp2k@...>
Date: 2008-02-18T21:41:23+09:00
Subject: Re: how to implement class constants?

ruud wrote:
> Most of the time I find a class.var notation of a class::var notation.

That's not entirely accurate. There is no class.var. There's object.method 
(where object can be a class and the method can have the same name as a 
variable, but it still has to be a method) and there's namespace::Constant 
where namespace can be a class or a module and Constant has to be a constant 
(it can't be any other sort of variable).
The :: is for accessing constants in a namespace and the . is for calling 
methods on an object.
It is not possible to access non-constant variables from outside the class 
without using methods designed for that purpose.


> In documentation I find class#method notation. How are these three
> related to each other?

class#method describes an instance method (as opposed to class.method which 
would describe a class method). If you see something like String#length, that 
means that you could e.g. write "hello".length, but not String.length. If you 
see String.new, you have to actually type String.new and not something 
like "hello".new.


HTH,
Sebastian
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