From: Conrad Schneiker <schneik@...>
Date: 2000-11-23T11:12:57+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6539] Re: Question about the behavior of write attributes in blocks

Hmm, no answer yet? Where is everyone?

Christoph writes:

# I lifted the following two lines from your (great) book - Page 285
# ************
# a = ["a","b","c","d"].
# a.collect! {|x| x+"!"}
# p a
# *************
# which has the output
# >> undefined method `a' for ["a", "b", "c", "d"]:Array (NameError)

Well, since AFAIK, all the code in the book always got run (and error-code 
checked) in the process of text generation, let's start by looking for 
transcription errors. Hmm, I don't see any period in the book at the end 
of the "a = ..." statement. Sure enough, if I remove the trailing period 
in your example, the error message goes away. 

The error message is somewhat puzzling and counterintuitive, however (at 
least for me).

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)