Why do Ruby setters need “self.” qualification within the class?

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Well, I think the reason this is the case is because qwerty = 4 is ambiguous—are you defining a new variable called qwerty or calling the setter? Ruby resolves this ambiguity by saying it will create a new variable, thus the self. is required.

Here is another case where you need self.:

class A
  def test
    4
  end
  def use_variable
    test = 5
    test
  end
  def use_method
    test = 5
    self.test
  end
end
a = A.new
a.use_variable # returns 5
a.use_method   # returns 4

As you can see, the access to test is ambiguous, so the self. is required.

Also, this is why the C# example is actually not a good comparison, because you define variables in a way that is unambiguous from using the setter. If you had defined a variable in C# that was the same name as the accessor, you would need to qualify calls to the accessor with this., just like the Ruby case.

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