From: Steve Tu <lists@...>
Date: 2012-11-27T17:26:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Novice: Understanding instance 'variables' and methods

I am nearly there!

If I have

class My_class
  attr_accessor :test
end

my_c = My_class.new
my_c.test = 10
my_c.test


Then I have automatically created two methods in My_class - the 
reader/writer - both with a method name of 'test'.

my_c is then an instance of that class, and to access the variables I 
simply use my_c.test  - BUT although my_c.test looks like it is a simple 
variable, it is really a call to a method of the name 'test'.

This is where I had the problem with the symbols test above - as I 
wanted to get to the getter of test, not the setter. But it seemed that 
every time that I used t.test it invoked the setter.

I'll look at the example again and try to see why I was getting that 
effect as I would guess that if I call the test method with an arg 
passed via the =, then it would invoke the setter, otherwise with no 
args it would invoke the getter (why doesn't Ruby use ? suffix on the 
getter - ie my_c.test? or t.test?).


Thanks for all of your help.

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