From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-02-03T06:47:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Variable types

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Corbin" <dcorbin@imperitek.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 1:04 PM
Subject: Variable types


> I know I'm new to ruby, but I feel obligated to share my dislike for 
> "special symbols" to indicate if a symbol is a member, local variable or 
> global variable.  Perhaps I don't know enough to make such a comment, 
> and someone will show me my mistunderstanding.  
> 
> Anyone else think like I do?

Well, I do *somewhat* dislike this... but I do like not having
to declare variables, and this is a partial consequence as
I see it. How else (e.g.) would you distinguish inside a method
body between local variables and attributes?

Two other comments.

1. I don't dislike "@foo" in Ruby quite as much as "self.foo" in
Python.
2. I dislike Perl's use of punctuation far more -- indicating not 
the variable's "scope" but its "kind." It is not only (IMO) far more
inflexible but also contributes to the code looking like line noise.

Hal Fulton