Overwriting to_s function in a class

Hi Kaiyang,

I assume your questions are referring to name and balance within the to_s method.

def to_s
    "Name: #{name}, Balance: #{sprintf("%0.2f", balance)}"
  end

You're correct that they are not instance variables because they do not have the @ in front of them. They could be local variables but then the program would produce an error since they're undefined. They're being accessed without having given them a value first.

The other thing that they could be are method calls. And in fact, the class does have a balance method which was written in the first part of this video. So balance is actually calling the balance method. The returned balance is then what is inserted into that part of the string.

What about name though? Looking through the class there isn't a name method. However, at the top you have attr_reader :name

That code automatically creates the following method:

def name
  @name
end

This is simply a getter method which returns the instance variable @name So in the to_s method, name is actually a call to that method. The returned name is what gets inserted into the string.

Your last question, "Will there actually be an error if we had called the instance variables in the overwritten to_s method instead?"

No error. You could still access the name instance variable directly and not go through the getter method.

This works too:

def to_s
    "Name: #{@name}, Balance: #{sprintf("%0.2f", balance)}"
  end

We can't do it with balance though because there is no instance variable @balance. That one has to remain a method call.

So to summarize, you could always access instance variables directly from within the class but attr_reader makes it convenient to access them through the getter methods by leaving off the @ symbol.