Re: passing ARGV to class methods

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Neubyr Neubyr <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> I was wondering if I really need to pass ARGV to MyPrinter's initialize
> method. The ARGV is anyway available to the class so  I think it doesn't
> need to be passed and can be used directly during option parsing step -
> 'opts_obj.parse!(ARGV)' .  But I am not sure if it's a good practice or
> not. Any tips?
>
>
It kind of depends on the scope of what you're doing. Is it a small one
file script? Then its probably not necessary (of course, in that case, the
class itself is probably overkill, too, probably a procedural file all in
the toplevel is enough).

If it's got more than one file, or you start feeling the need for the
class, then you should probably do it. Otherwise, you're coupling it to
ARGV, it now knows about who is using it, and it can only be used easily in
that context. If you want your code to be reusable or testable, then
directly referencing ARGV is a losing strategy. If you can pass in the args
array and file streams, then you can test that it does everything
correctly, by giving it arrays of hypothetical arguments and StringIO
instances.

In general, it's better to avoid hard references (references to constants
and globals). But be aware of your context.

-Josh