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We saw in the lesson on classes that Ruby needs methods in order to access attributes. For instance, if we want to access a @name instance variable, we had to write something like

def name @name end

Well, no longer! We can use attr_reader to access a variable and attr_writer to change it. If we write

class Person attr_reader :name attr_writer :name def initialize(name) @name = name end end

Ruby does something like this for us automatically:

def name @name end def name=(value) @name = value end

Like magic, we can read and write variables as we please! We just pass our instance variables (as symbols) to attr_reader or attr_writer.

(That name= might look funny, but you’re allowed to put an = sign in a method name. That’s just a Ruby convention saying, “hey, this method sets a value!”)

Instructions

1.

We’ve brought back our Person class with a method for getting @name and a method for changing his or her @job. Go ahead and remove the name and job= methods and add an attr_reader for :name and an attr_writer for :job.

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