Hi -- On Sun, 18 Jan 2009, Zhao Yi wrote: > In a ruby class, what does a variable "@@name" mean? Does it mean static > variable? Does its subclass have access to this field? It's a class variable, which is actually a class-hierarchy variable (shared between a class and its descendants), and also visible to all the instances of all of those classes. In other words, it's a kind of class-hierarchy-scoped global. Think of it as $$name :-) David -- David A. Black / Ruby Power and Light, LLC Ruby/Rails consulting & training: http://www.rubypal.com Coming in 2009: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (http://manning.com/black2) http://www.wishsight.com => Independent, social wishlist management!