"Mike Austin" <noone / nowhere.com> wrote

> Thanks, that works well.  But as you note, prepending 'self' kind of 
> defeats the purpose ;)  Is there a way to make Ruby not create local 
> variables, but use 'local var' or similar?  Io (www.iolanguage.com) has 
> this problem early on and was solved by using := for creating slots, and = 
> for updating slots.

I personally would like some such distinction. I don't having to use 
"self.att=" since
(a) one does not use self.method(..) in general
(b) self.method(..) has different privacy rules
(c) self.attr= is an exception to both (a) and (b)

Ara's
   attr(new_val)
works, but
(a) does not read like a setter, and
(b) is against the standard Ruby family of attr.. methods

I wouldn't hold my breath for := or equivalent :-)