Accessing Class Methods

ruby-talk
1

Please consider the following snippet of code:

class Parent
  def self.parent_greeting
   return 'Hello, from the Parent class.'
  end
end
class Child < Parent
  def self.child_greeting()
    return 'Hello, from Child class.'
  end
  def get_greeting()
    puts(self.class.child_greeting())
    puts(Parent.parent_greeting())
  end
end

If I instantiate the Child class into my_greeting, then:

my_greeting.class.parent_greeting() => Hello, from the Parent class.

and

my_greeting.class.child_greeting() => Hello, from Child class.

My question is: What are these 'class' methods that show up in my
method calls to the object and in the get greeting method?

I have a hunch that the question is answered in the 'Disambiguation'
section of http://www.jimmycuadra.com/posts/self-in-ruby; but, I wasn't
able to understand it. Is the answer to my question something that I'm
going to be able to grasp; or, will I need to wait until my skills
improve?

Thanks for any input.

         ... doug

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2

Module or Class methods are simply methods which don't need or belong to
a particular instance. In general they'll be methods which don't need to
reference the internal state of an object. The most commonly used (but
not commonly altered) Class method would Class.new

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