From: Kent Dahl <kentda@...>
Date: 2002-10-12T01:37:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Different Behavior of Class Variables w.r.t ||=

William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:
> Can you elaborate more on what sort of bugs is likely to occur?  (I.e.,
> under what situation does "@@a ||= value" create a danger of creating the
> class variable at the wrong level?) 

I am no expert at this stuff, but I ran into something like this when I
used the "unless defined?" way. A quick example:
#=================================
class Base
  def show
    puts @@a
  end
end
class Derived < Base
  @@a = 2 unless defined? @@a
  def show_derived
    puts @@a
  end
end
class Base
  @@a = 1 unless defined? @@a
end
Base.new.show              #=> 1
Derived.new.show           #=> 1
Derived.new.show_derived   #=> 2
#=================================


> And if it is a problem with class
> variables, why is it not a problem with instance variables?

Because instance variables simply belong to the current object. Class
variables has a whole nother dimension to get lost in; the class
hierarchy. A class variable is visible only to the class it was defined
in and below, IIRC. Defining a class variable above in the hierarchy
creates a new one. (Such as shown in the example above) 

The short version then is that the ||= is so short and inconspicous that
it would help to hide such bugs from you. Using "unless defined?" is
more verbose, fitting to the amount of headache it can induce. (In my
case, it was while reloading libraries using "load" in a program I was
editing while it was running.)

The earlier threads on class variables versus class instance variables
might shine more light on the subject.

-- 
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