From: Jeremy Bopp <jeremy@...>
Date: 2010-10-07T12:47:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Missing @ for instace variable in class, but no error message

On 10/06/2010 10:17 PM, John Sikora wrote:
> Jeremy Bopp wrote:
>> Beware of attempting to use the bare a= accessor within an instance
>> method though.  That will instead cause a variable named "a" to be
>> created with the the method's scope rather than use the a= accessor, so
>> @a won't be updated as expected.  If you want to use the a= accessor,
>> you need to use self.a = whatever.  e.g.:
>>
> 
> Jeremy raises an excellent point. I wish I had read this post a few days 
> ago. A few weeks ago, someone asked the question (paraphrased) "why do 
> people use 'self.some_method' instead of just 'some_method'?".
> 
> I knew that I had a lot of redundant 'self's and a few days ago I got 
> around to removing them in a script. As Jeremy points out, leaving off 
> 'self' in 'some_method=' results in the creation of the variable 
> 'some_method', as testing showed.

Thanks go to Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler, Andy Hunt, and their book
"Programming Ruby" -- my introduction to Ruby. :-)

-Jeremy