Novice: Understanding instance 'variables' and methods

A question - or comment - on instance variables.

Looking at ':symbols' today, I came across this example:

class Test
  puts :Test.object_id.to_s
  def test
    puts :test.object_id.to_s
    @test = 10
    puts :test.object_id.to_s
  end
end
t = Test.new
t.test

So far, my understanding was that both methods and variables used lower
case names, and that methods could be written both with and without
'()'. To me that then made the t.test line a bit confusing, as it
appears to invoke the method test on t. How then could you ever access
the instance variable test of t?

Am I then also right in assuming that in Ruby there aren't any true
visible instance variables, as to make the variable visible, you have to
include an accessor - which effectively creates the getter/setter of
that variable?

So if I changed the above code to have an instance variable of 'value',
with an accessor, I could then have:


@test = @value = 10

and then access t.value - giving me 10. BUT t.value is then really a
call to the 'generated' getter of value - so is really a method call?

Do I have that about right?

And in the above case, where a 'variable' and method have the same name,
is there a way to force the use of a specific 'setter/getter' - ie to
have t.test return the value of test, rather than call the method test
on t?

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