From: Kent Dahl <kentda@...>
Date: 2002-08-11T05:47:09+09:00
Subject: Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method

Tom Sawyer wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 2002-08-10 at 05:26, Kent Dahl wrote:
> > Tom Sawyer wrote:
> > So, while not quite junk, they are ugly, nececarry implementation
> > details that need to be hidden as soon as possible :-)
> 
> how might you do that? as far i can tell that would involve declaring
> variables. i don't know how i feel about that.

Uh, no, I was thinking: 

We already use accessor methods to hide @ away, all the time from the
outside, and also from the inside (which this discussion is mostly
about). 

Earlier there has been discussions about @@ vs instance variables of the
class objects. I'm not sure how cumbersome that would be to use though
(in subclasses, you wouldn't be able to just do type.variable=).

As for $, you use accessor methods on module (or class) objects instead,
effectively giving yourself a namespace for your global variable. I.e.:
module X
  def self.x
    @x
  end
  def self.x=(x)
    @x=x
  end
end
X.x = 5
puts X.x

Defining the methods are akin to declaring the variables, but it sure
beats a $�anyday :-)

-- 
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 ))\_student_/((  \__d L b__/  NTNU - graduate engineering - 5. year  )
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