From: William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>
Date: 2002-09-14T04:02:26+09:00
Subject: Re: private variables

Well, I am proposing 2 alternatives that I think is more consistent with
the rest of Ruby.

1) The use of the keyword "private"
Any methods defined after this keyword is private.  So probably we can
make any new instance variables created after this keyword to be also
private.  But mixing the private and non-private variables will be
confusing.

2) The use of a new symbol.
Ruby is to some extent influenced by Perl, and in Perl "$", "@", and
"%" are used to denote the type of variables.  Ruby has used "$" and
"@" for special meaning for variables, so this suggests to use "%" prefix
for private variables.

Regards,

Bill
============================================================================
Alan Chen <alan@digikata.com> wrote:

>> On a side note, I wish there were another symbol that could be used in
>> place of _.  It makes variables look asymmetric (unless you write _a_).
>> 
>> Paul

> Wasn't there some talk about using symbols?  It's not symmetric, but for
> some reason it looks better to me.

> a = 1

> 10.times { |:a| puts a }

> puts a # => 1


> -- 
> Alan Chen
> Digikata LLC
> http://digikata.com