Louis J Scoras wrote: > On 10/17/06, ara.t.howard / noaa.gov <ara.t.howard / noaa.gov> wrote: > >> it's a nice idea, but not as a default, consider Object#method_missing, >> Module#const_missing, etc. they rely on being fired when something >> is not >> defined... > > Not only that. Consider that the 'my' operator in perl is more than > just a convenient way to get the interpreter to check your spelling > with the strict pragma. It's actually there as a scoping construct: > if you don't declare a variable with 'my', what you get is a package > (global) variable rather than a lexical. > > I don't think it needs to be a default but it could be advisable to encourage its use especially among people new to Ruby and/or programming in general. I have not come to the point where the things I write in ruby are particularly long but I can easily see that as my programs get larger and larger I am more likely to run into this quirk. Autocompletion is great and all but it's a bit of a crutch in this case; after all what happens if I have to end up coding in notepad or something like that? (I think I would just kill myself if I had to code anything in notepad....but it could happen.)