Would it be possible to provide an analog to const_get/set() methods 
for variables?

I think the class name Binding is ok.   There is a sense of the word 
binding in which
it refers to a mapping of one set of things to another, as in "the 
binding between local
services and multicast addresses".

I think of Scope as being a descriptive attribute of a variable or 
function and not
necessarily a container for it.  It might seem weird to say, "I have an 
array of Scopes
which all contain such and such a variable."   I think you're more 
likely ask, "What
is the scope of this variable?"  By which, if I understand this 
correctly (and I probably
don't), you'd be referring to the topmost Binding in which the given 
variable is visible.

It seems to me that the word which best describes what Binding is doing 
this context
is, well, context.  But I suppose context is too general a term to be 
used as a class
name in this context.

It also seems like having mutable Binding's has the potential to be as 
powerful and
confusing as callcc().  Can I pass a Binding instance to another thread 
and write to
it from there?

Just thinking out load...

On Thursday, January 23, 2003, at 08:01 PM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

>
> On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Ryan Pavlik wrote:
>
>> What about "Scope", as in Scope and Extent?  These terms are 
>> originally
>> from Lisp, I believe, but their definition has been applied broadly, 
>> and
>> the definitions are just right.  From _Common_Lisp_the_Language_,
>> chapter 3:
>
> Winston-Horn LISP (3rd ed) also uses the word Fence to mean a lexical
> scope, which makes it a possible new name for the Binding class. 
> Calling
> that class "Scope" is tempting, but the problem is that there are many
> things that may be called scopes right now in Ruby but aren't Bindings 
> at
> all.
>
> ________________________________________________________________
> Mathieu Bouchard                       http://artengine.ca/matju
>
>
>