From: dblack@...
Date: 2002-08-12T22:27:54+09:00
Subject: Re: ambiguity backtrack - accessors and persistent locals

Hi --

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Tom Sawyer wrote:

> i'd like to refocus on this aspect of the ambiguity thread. from what's
> been posted thus far on the topic, it would seem it is best to always
> use the accessor methods when they exist. i hanker to bet many of us do
> not do this. and i think this has to do with the fact that the
> @variables are more convenient, due to the extra thoguht that must go
> into determining when self must be used (albiet small), and the fact
> that @ is shorter than self. other reasons?

I have to admit that neither of those things bothers me at all.  Ruby
is concise enough that three characters one way or another, on
relatively rare occasions, doesn't bother me.  And, as I've said,
knowing when to specify the receiver should not be a burden; it just
means you know what your code is doing.  (We've probably spent more
thought and typing on this thread than everyone on this list will
spend thinking about and typing 'self.' in their combined lifetimes
:-)

In any case -- assigning to @var is only convenient if it does what
you want.  I tend to lean toward using the accessor methods for
attributes, even inside a class, since those methods may be doing
things far beyond just setting or getting the instance variable
associated with their name.  The raw @thing=x probably works, in
practice, quite often, but if the object has a #thing= method, there
might be a real necessity to channel assignments through that.


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav