On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:03 AM, Pete Moran<pete / zoborg.com> wrote:
> I am a total newbie to Ruby, so please bare with me.

Averting my eyes, I'd prefer to keep my clothes on myself! In other
words I'll grin and BEAR it!  <G>

Seriously, David Black already gave you pretty much the response I
would have, although my first steps in refining it a bit might be to
make the hash arg optional:

def initialize(items={}
   items.each do |key,value|
     instance_variable_set("@#{key}", value)
   end
 end

Another thing variation would be to use those accessors so as to not
add 'accidental' instance variables

def initialize(items={}
   items.each do |key,value|
     send("#{key}=", value) rescue raise "unknown attribute #{key}"
   end
 end

And as the King of Siam said, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!

-- 
Rick DeNatale

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