Groovy scope – how to access script variable in a method

When you have methods or statements outside of a class declaration in a groovy script, an implicit class is created. To answer your questions:

1. In your example, func() can access the field c because they are both members of the implicit class. The Main class is not, so it can’t.

2. You need to pass a reference to the script variable to method(). One way is to pass the implicitly defined binding object, through which you can access all the script scope variables.

Example:

#!/usr/bin/groovy
import groovy.transform.Field;

//println org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.InvokerHelper.getVersion()

def a = 42;
b = "Tea"
@Field def c = "Cheese"

void func()
{
    // println a // MissingPropertyException
    println b // prints "Tea"
    println c // prints "Cheese" with groovy 2.1.2, MissingPropertyException with groovy 1.8.6

}

class Main
{
    def scriptObject
    def binding

    def method()
    {
        // println a // MissingPropertyException
        println binding.b
        println scriptObject.c
    }
}

func();
new Main(scriptObject: this, binding: binding).method();