Class member variable and method name collision

Question

I am working with a 3rd party library where I'm trying to access a class member variable but unfortunately there is also a method with the same name.

class Test
  attr_writer :var

  def var
    "some other stuff that is not var"
  end
end

test = Test.new()

# Returns result of function but I need variable contents
test.var

Unfortunately I cannot change this since it's 3rd party.

This question doesn't make sense. Instance variables and methods have different namespaces, instance variables *always* start with `@`, methods *never* start with `@`, there *cannot* possibly be a name collision. — Jörg W Mittag, Dec 12 '15 at 02:06

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 11 '15 at 20:16

2

You could use instance_variable_get:

test = Test.new
test.instance_variable_get(:@var)

answered Dec 11 '15 at 20:16

spickermann

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 11 '15 at 20:25

You can add a reader-method with other name:

class Test
   def var_reader
       @var
   end
end

This may be better, than directly using instance_variable_get, if you need it more than once or may need some additional logic around

On ruby-2.1+ this can be more elegant with a refinement:

module TestRefinement
  refine Test do
    def var_getter
      @var
    end
  end
end

using TestRefinement
a.var_getter

Class member variable and method name collision

2 Answers2