Phil Tomson schrieb:
> Well, it's a bit strange in the example above.  Really what I want is for it to 
> be method-level, I suppose.  Recall that I showed an alternative where the user 
> actually defines the initialize method explicitly:
> 
>    #....
>    def initialize
>       count = 0
>       define_behvior {
>         #...do something with count ...
>       }
>    end

Hi Phil, sorry for the late reply. I had to implement part of the code 
to understand why you can't use accessor methods for variables. Accessor 
methods for inputs and outputs are no problem because you just read from 
the inputs and set the outputs with a method call (<<). The problem with 
variables is that you want to be able to set them via assignment, and 
for Ruby

   variable = value

never is a method call. You could write

   self.variable = value

or use other methods to set the value of a variable, but with assignment 
  you have to use local variables, like you've shown in the explicit 
initialize method above.

Regards,
Pit