Instance variables

An object’s own knowledge

Now that you understand how the string that we pass to the method new ends up being passed to the new object’s initialize method, we can start improving initialize, so it does something with the string, and actually initializes our new object:

class Person
  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
  end
end

This introduces another new concept: @name is a new type of variable, called an “instance variable”.

The body of the initialize method now does nothing else but assign the value of the local variable name to an instance variable @name.

You remember how we said that each method has its own local scope, which is created when the method is called, and populated with local variables from the arguments list. You have also learned that this scope is erased, and thrown away when Ruby exits the method body and returns from the method. And that local variables that are visible in one method are not visible in other methods: that’s why they are called local.

Now, the thing is: Every object also has its own scope.

An object’s scope is populated with instance variables, in the moment we assign something to them. And they are visible everywhere in the object, that is, in every method that the object has.

Instance variables live in, and are visible everywhere in the object’s scope.

You can think of the object’s scope as your own knowledge, or memories.

For example, you know your name, your email address, and your email password. You keep this knowledge around, and you can use it when you do things (such as responding to another person). Likewise, an object keeps its instance variables around, as long as the object exists.

Ok, let’s see how that works in practise.

If you create, and output an instance of our class Person, you’ll see that Ruby now prints out the instance variable, too:

person = Person.new("Ada")
p person

The first line creates a new instance of the class Person, passing the string "Ada", and assign this new object to the variable person. The second line will then print it out:

#<Person:0x007fd8947aa868 @name="Ada">

As you can see this includes the instance variable @name with the value "Ada": This specific, concrete instance of the class Person knows their name.

You can think of this as you, as a programmer, creating this new person, and in the moment of its creation, its birth, you also give it a name. Which kind of how it works with real people, too, isn’t it?

Hmm, well … Yeah, sort of. Anyhow, let’s move on.