ActionScript-like "with" for Ruby, result of SO discussion

with.rb

module Kernel
  def with(obj, &block)
    obj.instance_eval &block
    obj
  end
end

with_example.rb

module Kernel
  def with(obj, &block)
    obj.instance_eval &block
    obj
  end
end

class Person
  attr_accessor :name, :example
end

tester = with(Person.new) do
  self.name = "Andy"
  self.example = "Example"
end

puts "#{tester.name}:#{tester.example}"

you could also use @name = … instead of self.name = ...

You can, but I prefer using setters/getters over directly manipulating instance vars.

Good point. But it's really interesting that the accessor methods are only available through self, because if you define a method yourself like def hello; puts 'hello!'; end it is available without self. Do you know why?

Only the writers need to be qualified with self, not the readers. The reason is simple: when Ruby encounters a bareword, it tries to resolve it as a local var. If there is none, it will try to call a method by that name. Inside the class body self is the implicit receiver, so the reader works. Now for the writer there's a problem. If you write something like foo = "bar", Ruby will create a new local variable, hence you need to make the receiver explicit. Try defining a method like hello= and you'll see that you'll also need the receiver for the same reason (unless of course you call it like hello=(value)).

That makes sense. Thank you very much for explaining this in detail!