Stephane Ducasse wrote:

> Have you look at the implemtation because I suspect that self-message 
> would imply
> method lookup while the other (no self) would imply no lookup (like 
> Java private).

I haven't looked at the implementation. I'm pretty sure Ruby's "private"
is always doing lookup, though; it's not like Java's "private". Here's
some code:

class Person
  private
  def name
    "Fred"
  end
end

class PrintingPerson < Person
  def printName
    print(name)
  end
end

p = PrintingPerson.new
p.printName        # works fine
print(p.name)      # raises an exception


Does that answer your question?


Adam