From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2003-02-02T01:22:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Local variables & blocks

On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 10:57:42PM +0900, Tom Sawyer wrote:
> i realize now that self can't really define the scope. b/c then any definition 
> would actually bind self to it . i.e.
> 
> class Foo
> 	def bar
> 		self  #--> normally instance of Foo, but scope is Foo#bar
> 	end
> end
> 
> perhaps having an attribute of the object actually called scope would be of 
> interest?
> 
> class Foo
> 	def bar
> 		self  #--> instance of Foo
> 		scope  #--> instance of Foo's bar method
> 	end
> end
> 
> thus local variables such as:
> 
> 	x = 1
> 
> are in effect:
> 
> 	scope.x = 1

Then again, instead of calling it 'scope' you can call it local

 local.x = 1

and then, we make some syntactic sugar:
  'local.'    <=>   	'&!@'

and we get to
 &!@x = 1

OH MY GOD! ;-)

This is anyway cleaner than self[i], cause the closure only wraps one
stack frame. However it is still very powerful as it captures _all_
locals.

def foo
  a = 1
  b = 2
  scope   # gets all the locals
end

foo.a    # 1 

It would be possible to implement this in pure Ruby if we could
define a macro that used #binding .

If you go the way of adding a prefix for locals you cannot possibly beat
something like '&local'; moreover that notation doesn't create
'super-closures'. The point is it seems we have something against
adding line noise :)

Ummm I'm thinking of the weirdness of having instance method objects...

class Bar
 def foo
 end
 class << foo
   def bar
   # Now, I'm an instance method singleton method. Uh?
   end
   iamAlocalOfFoo = true
 end
end

If everything is going to be an object, Ruby is going to be Smalltalk ;) 

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