Constants or class variables in ruby?

Question

I\'ve been programming in Ruby for a few months now, and I\'m wondering when it is appropriate to use constants over class variables and vice versa. (I\'m working in Rails,

Answer 1

Note that class variables are private to a class and its instances (cf. http://phrogz.net/programmingruby/tut_classes.html). However, if you want to make your constant private you can always do:

FOO = 18
private_constant :FOO