From: dejaspam@... (Bill Atkins)
Date: 2004-03-09T20:59:41+09:00
Subject: How do I enforce variable declarations in Ruby?

Is there any way to require that all variables and class attributes be
predeclared?  I'm looking for something similar to Perl's strict
pragma.  It would prevent bugs like this:

class Demo
    def initialize
        @count = 0
    end

    def anotherfunc
        @cout += 1
    end

    def get_count
        @count
    end
end

d = Demo.new
puts d.get_count
d.anotherfunc
d.get_count

Note the typo in anotherfunc.  This code was intended to output a zero
followed by a one, but because of the typo, will output two 0's.

Is there any way to prevent errors like this from happening?  I find
it hard to believe that a language as well-designed as Ruby would lack
this simple feature.