At Wed, 11 Oct 2000 11:37:25 +0900,
Hal E. Fulton <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> wrote:
> 
> OK, here is what I think I know.
> 
> These three fragements differ only in that the last one defines a
> private method, no?

nop

> class Object
>   def foo
>     ...
>   end
> end

you defined public method 'foo' in class Object

you call it:
Object.new.foo

> def foo
>   ...
> end

you defined private method 'foo' in class Object

you call it
foo # no receiver.

> def Object.foo
>   ...
> end

you defined singleton method for class Object

you call it
Object.foo

> And isn't it true that a method like bar= must be called with a receiver?

nop.

> Then why won't this work?

so that's just the way it is.

> def bar=
>   ...
> end
> 
> self.bar = 5

however, i don't know why the following doesn't work :(

def bar=(value)
  p value
end

bar = 5

> It tells me that bar is private. Why? 

because you defined private method :) this thing came up on -talk a
few days ago, no?

> [2  <text/html; iso-8859-1 (quoted-printable)>]

and you can keep your the html file.

hope it helps
--
            yashi