From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2003-01-30T23:01:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Local variables & blocks

ahoward <ahoward@fsl.noaa.gov> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Martin DeMello wrote:
> 
>> Yes, but my point was, when doing this, I usually have either object
>> being an instance variable, or object being assigned shortly before I do
>> the call, or object being one of the args to the current method.
> 
> 'shortly' is subjective though :
> 
>  require 'tons_of_stuff'
>  object = 42
> 
> is this 'shortly'.  alot of namespace polluting could have happened during the
> require...

But method-level scoping still works as before, so I don't see the
problem. 

>> In the first case, you wouldn't use @object as a block temp variable
>> anyway.
> 
> why not?

why would you want an instance variable to be scoped to a block? 

<snip>

> but i'm with you on not wanting to do this
> 
>  x = nil
>  loop {
>      x = ...
>  }
> 
> thing all the time.  however, that really seems like the ONLY time one
> want to 'export' variables isn't it?

Pretty much, yeah. But in Ruby, with everything contained in methods and
classes anyway, I tend not to bother so much about the global namespace.
If one had to distinguish by wa of keywords, I'd rather see a 'local'
keyword than an 'export'.

martin