gistfile1.txt

I'm reading MetaProgramming Ruby by The Pragmatic Programmers and I'm very confused about private methods.

On page 55 he says "you cannot call a private method with an explicit receiver. In other words, every time you call a private method, it must be on the implicit receiver—self."

Then he gives this example:

class C

  def public_method
    self.private_method
  end

  private

  def private_method; end

end

C.new.public_method

=> NoMethodError: private method ‘private_method' called [...]

So he says you can only call private methods with self, and then gives an example of that not working...???

He even says right after "You can make this code work by removing the self keyword."

But he just said "it must be on the implicit receiver—self."!!!

Am I going crazy? What do I not understand?