From: Christian Szegedy <szegedy@...>
Date: 2002-09-17T02:31:33+09:00
Subject: Re: private variables

Paul Brannan wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2002 at 11:50:54PM +0900, Christian Szegedy wrote:
> 
>>Private methods and class-local instance variables are quite different.
>>If you use a private method, you get an exception. If you try to use
>>a class-local instance variable then you just use another variable,
>>which could lead to obscure bugs.
>>So I think punctuation (and it should be as short as possible)
>>is a much better option.
> 
> 
> If you try to use a class-local instance variable and it has not yet
> been initialized, I would expect to see a warning when you run with ruby
> -w, just like you get now with regular instance variables.
> 
> Paul
> 

I often initialize instance variables conditionally. (That is, on first use).