From: ahoward <ahoward@...>
Date: 2003-02-20T01:11:37+09:00
Subject: Re: How to test for existence of instance variable?

On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Paul Brannan wrote:


<snip>
> This is only a problem for dynamically-added attributes, since
> attributes that are known when the object is created can (and should) be
> initialized to nil.
</snip>

i disagree with this, i would never do this in C

  struct
  {
    int x;
  }
  s;

  bzero (&s, sizeof (s));

  s.x = 0;    /* redundant!  */


just as i would never in ruby do

  class S
    attr_accessor :x

    def initialize
      @x = nil	  # redundant
    end
  end

  s = S.new

since ruby does this for me and it simply clutters the source file IMHO.

-a

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