From: Nathaniel Talbott <nathaniel@...>
Date: 2003-12-06T04:48:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Attempted roadmap of future instance variables....

On Dec 5, 2003, at 14:18, Christoph wrote:

>> There is no way for the subclass to access the superclass's
>> instance variable @a now, and I don't see a good work-around for this.
>
> You can make the same argument in any situation like
>
> class  A
>    def meth
> 	...
>    end
> end
>
> class B < A
>    def meth
> 	..
>    End
> end
>
> Now there is no way that B-objects can access
> A#meth.

In this case it is trivial to alias the super-class method if I need 
continued access to the super-classes implementation. I don't know of a 
way that could be done for instance variables. More importantly, 
though, I think instance variables are fundamentally a different 
construct than methods. I'm having difficulty precisely delineating the 
differences (internal vs. external?), but I just don't think you can 
compare the potential problems from method overriding with those of 
instance variable shadowing. They certainly have commonalities, just as 
apples and oranges are both fruit, but they have quite different cores.

I still think namespaces are a good place to look for the answer to 
class local instance variables (and perhaps class local methods, too).


Nathaniel

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