On 2/28/06, Markus Werner <markus.werner+news@[...].de>  wrote:
>  Should it assign the local var "a" or should it call the method "a="?
>  If you say that it should assign the local var "a" just if there is no
>  method "a=".

thanks for pointing out the side effects of the other stylistic
choice. now it's much clearer why it was done this way.

>  What happend to your code if some day in the future you or some else define
>  a methode "a=" to write the ivar @a. And you don't remember that your
>  method foo use a local var a?

my tests would fail, I guess.

I also program in VBA, where you have a 'property set' feature that is
roughly the equivalent of the 'name=' operator in Ruby and it has
never been a problem.  the few times this error slipped through, the
tests always caught it.

>  What should happend in this case?
> 
>  def n
>    @n
>  end
> 
>  def n=(n)
>      @n = n
>  end

I guess the 'n' in '@n = n' would be the one most internally scoped,
i.e. the passed arg

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