From: Davy Brion <ralinx@...>
Date: 2010-09-10T23:47:42+09:00
Subject: Re: calling private accessors

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On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Brian Candler <b.candler@pobox.com> wrote:

> Davy Brion wrote:
> >   def set_the_name(value)
> >     name = value
> >   end
>
> To Ruby, that's an assignment to a local variable, which then drops out
> of scope. That's why you have to do "self.name= value" to call the
> method.
>

d'oh! of course :)


> If it really were private, you'd need
>
>  send(:name=, value)
>
> although being private rather negates the purpose of an 'accessor' which
> is to make values accessible :-)
>
>
in this case, i only want the accessor to be acessible to the class and its
subclasses, mainly because the subclasses need to be able to override the
'storage mechanism' (ie: backing field vs hash or something)... it's a bid
of an edge-case though :)


> > when calling the private accessor without using self, its
> > implementation
> > clearly isn't executed but no exception is raised either... why is that?
>
> Because it's perfectly legal to assign a value to a local variable :-)
>

obviously :P

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