From: Ron Fox <fox@...>
Date: 2008-02-22T19:49:55+09:00
Subject: Re: How to define the assignment operator in Ruby ?

Exactly.. since assignment in Ruby is really assigning a >reference<
to an object to a variable rather than copying an existing object
to a new one. For example:

a  = "some String"
b  = a
b  << " more text"

print "#{a}"

Will print "some String more text" not "some String" because a and b 
refer to the same objects rather than distinct copies of an object
that contains "some String".  This is why the dup/clone methods exist.

Ron

Gary Wright wrote:
> On Feb 21, 2008, at 9:10 AM, Ilan Berci wrote:
>> In ruby, we don't assign to an instance as you mentioned, we assign  
>> to a
>> variable that can hold any type.  We therefore can't override the
>> assignment operator.
>>
>> BUT you can override an assignment operation.. such as
> 
> Setter methods may look like assignment, but semantically they are  
> method calls.  I think it just confuses matters to call setter method  
> invocation an 'assignment operation'.
> 
> The desire to override assignment or define an assignment operator is  
> generally indicative of some misunderstanding regarding Ruby's object  
> model.
> 
> Gary Wright
>