From: Christopher Dicely <cmdicely@...>
Date: 2011-06-20T00:54:02+09:00
Subject: Re: CORE - Inconsistent Handling of Uninitialized Variables

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Ilias Lazaridis <ilias@lazaridis.com> wrote:

>
> Is this a defect or is there an explanation for this behaviour?

Well, I haven't checked the draft ISO standard or RubySpec, but the
behavior is certainly widely known and documented in many Ruby books,
and lots of code relies on the current behavior, and would break if it
were changed. So, I'm going to say its a feature rather than a defect,
whether or not it was originally an intended feature.

And I suspect that its pretty well thought out with the possible
exception of class variable behavior. Globals and locals are often
first assigned remotely from the site where they are used, so calling
them when they haven't been set isn't really a sign of a logic error
-- default to nil makes sense. Local variables are generally (there
are some possible exceptions, I think) set directly in the local
context where they are used, so using one without it being assigned
first is a sign of an error, so not defaulting to nil makes sense.

Class variables probably should behave like instance variables, but
then, class variables are almost never the right tool to use anyway.