Reinitialize a Ruby object

I am wondering if I am implementing the reinitialization of a Ruby object correctly.

I have a class called Clipboard that holds folders and files. When creating a new clipboard object, it is always empty: there are no folders or files on it. I also have a reset method that clears all the folders and files from the clipboard.

At first my code looked liked this:

class Clipboard
  def initialize
    @folders = []
    @files = []
  end

  def reset
    @folders = []
    @files = []
  end
end

But the fact that reset and initialize are exactly the same annoyed me. Besides resetting a clipboard object is the same as reinitializing it. So I changed my code to:

class Clipboard
  def initialize
    @folders = []
    @files = []
  end

  def reset
    initialize
  end
end

This works, but I was wondering if it is the correct way of 开发者_开发百科going about reinitializing my object? Are there any reasons why I should not be calling initialize from an instance method? Thanks!

---

This code smells to me as it doesn't seem like good practice to call the constructor from within the an instance. I would simply refractor it like so:

class Clipboard
  def initialize
    setup
  end

  def reset
    setup
  end

  private

  def setup
    @folders = []
    @files = []
  end
end

---

It works but is a little unconventional. Most likely you will want to add more functionality to the constructor. What might be better is to use a private method the actually zeroes out the arrays and then your intent will be more clear in the code:

class Clipboard
  def initialize
    [...]
    setup
    [...]
  end

  def reset
    setup
  end

  private

  def setup
     @folders, @files = [], []
  end
end