From: Stephen Taylor <sjt@5jt.com>
Date: 2004-02-09T06:38:05+09:00
Subject: Newbie question

We are two grey-haired programmers studying Ruby and have a question so
basic we can't believe we 're unable to find an answer in "The Ruby Way" and
"Ruby in 21 Days" or the online material.

Our class Money holds pennies as Fixnum values and its to_s method returns a
string with the currency symbol prefixed. (Leave commas and decimal point
for later.)

    class Money
    attr_accessor :value
        def to_s
            '�' + @value.to_s
        end
    end

permits:

    m = Money.new
    m.value= 1234
    puts m.to_s
    "�1234"

Question: can we create and set in one move? We imagine

    n = Money.new(1234)

But if we:

    def Method.new(amt)
        initialize
        @value = amt
    end

we get:

    n = Money.new(1234)
    n.to_s
    "1234"
    n.class
    "Fixnum"

Advice?

Stephen Taylor & Ray Cannon