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rubyaccess-specifier

Ruby class initialize (constructor) is private method or public method?

Is initialize method (constructor) private or public in ruby?

Solution

  • Let's see:

    class Test
  def initialize; end
end

p Test.new.private_methods.sort.include?(:initialize)

    This prints true, so initialize is a private method. This makes sense, it is only called by the new class method if the object is created. If we want, we can do something like this:

    class Test
  def initialize
    @counter = 0
  end

  def reset!
    initialize
  end
end

    Misusing the constructor like this could however lead to problems if it does more than simple variable initialization.