From: Steven Smolinski <steven.smolinski@...>
Date: 2003-02-07T13:36:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Private lvalue methods unusable?

Dmitri Colebatch <dim@colebatch.com> wrote:
>> In message "Private lvalue methods unusable?"
>>     on 03/02/07, Steven Smolinski <steven.smolinski@sympatico.ca> writes:
>>
>> |How do I call a private lvalue method?
>>
>> No way, except using "send", e.g.
>>
>>   self.send(:dollars=, 100)
> 
> I'm assuming there's some good reason for this that isn't apparent to
> (at least) me.  Would someone care to enlighten me out of interest?

Private methods can't have an explicit receiver (i.e., you can't do
self.method on a private).  Calling it directly looks like this:

  dollars = 100

So a private lvalue method and assignment to a local variable have the
exact same syntax.  Which means ruby had to choose whether it should:

1) look for a method and raise an exception if there is none, or 
2) create a local variable.

It appears ruby does (2).

I suppose there's always (3), which is to look for a method first and
create a local variable if there's no method defined.  But that's some
serious semantic gymnastics, and may make things worse rather than
better.  I don't know enough about ruby to comment on that.

Steve
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