Naming convention for methods which clear instance variable

Question

What is a good naming convention for clearing an instance variable via a method. The actual value is stored in an array and the methods filter the array to find the value.

Here are methods I already have:

class Foo

  def initialize
    # Array of objects
    @data = []
  end

  # Get the variable or default value
  def variable
    @data.select { |o| o.attribute == 'Some Value' }.first || 'Default Value'
  end

  # Does the variable exist
  def variable?
    [email protected] { |o| o.attribute == 'Some Value' }.first
  end

  # Does this make sense?
  def clear_variable!
    # Delete the variable
  end
end

Or should it be something like delete_variable!?

Answer 1

If you're creating something like that, it's best to emulate the conventional method names used within the most similar structure in Ruby. In this case, it's Hash:

class Foo
  def initialize
    @data = [ ]
    @default = 'Default Value'
  end

  def [](k)
    found = @data.find { |o| o.attribute == k }

    found ? found.value : @default
  end

  def has_key(k)?
    [email protected] { |o| o.attribute == k }
  end

  # Does this make sense?
  def delete(k)
    @data.reject! { |o| o.attribute == k }
  end
end

Generally a method with ! in it either raises exceptions if something goes wrong, it makes a permanent modification to the state of something (e.g. in-place modification methods), or both. It's not taken to mean "reset" or "clear".