Hi-

On Jun 30, 2006, at 9:19 PM, Minkoo Seo wrote:

>  Hi Ezra.
> 
>  You've got it wrong. The point is that though a method that is defined
>  outside of any class becomes automatically part of Object, it can't be
>  called with exact receiver because the method is *private*.
> 
>  In other words,
> 
>  # foo is private method of Object
>  def foo
>   ..
>  end
> 
>  class Bar; end
> 
>  # This is okay, because I'm calling self.foo and we do not
>  # need to state self as receiver.
>  foo
> 
>  # This is completely wrong. Private method can't be called
>  # with exact receiver.
>  Bar.new.foo
> 
>  Hope this helps.
> 
>  Sincerely,
>  Minkoo Seo
> 


My irb disagrees with you

irb(main):012:0>  def foo
irb(main):013:1>  puts 'foo'
irb(main):014:1>  end
=>  nil
irb(main):015:0>  class Bar
irb(main):016:1>  end
=>  nil
irb(main):017:0>  Bar.new.foo
foo
=>  nil
irb(main):018:0>  Object.private_methods.grep /foo/
=>  []
irb(main):019:0>  Object.instance_methods.grep /foo/
=>  ["foo"]
irb(main):020:0>  Bar.instance_methods.grep /foo/
=>  ["foo"]
irb(main):021:0>  Bar.private_methods.grep /foo/
=>  []

But I understand that in a normal ruby script methods def'ed outside  
of a class definition becore private methods of Object but its not  
the case in irb.

-Ezra