From: Yossef Mendelssohn <ymendel@...>
Date: 2008-11-28T05:38:47+09:00
Subject: private #initialize

My apologies if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find
anything in a Google search, searching this particular list/group on
Google, or my first attempt at blade. (Later attempts complained about
not being able to access the index.)

So, in Ruby a private method is one that can only be called by the
object itself, and that's enforced by the simple rule of disallowing
an explicit receiver. Of course, there are ways around this; any
message can be passed if you just know what to do. Maybe I'm late to
the game, but I didn't realize it was okay to have #initialize be a
private method. More than that, I didn't realize #initialize was
*always* private. This confuses me because I think of SomeClass.new to
be

    def new(*args, &block)
      instance = allocate
      instance.initialize(*args, &block)
      instance
    end

But that obviously can't be the case if #initialize is private.
Instead, it has to be

    def new(*args, &block)
      instance = allocate
      instance.send(:initialize, *args, &block)
      instance
    end

It's a small change, but significant. And it seems odd to have
something this central to the language skirting the boundaries of
access control. Is it simply because an object shouldn't be re-
initialized once it's created? And if so, is that so horrible?

--
-yossef