How to access a property of a class inside a subclass

class Animal
attr_accessor :state
@state=:alive
class Dog
# I want to access the @state in here
end
class Cat
# I want to access the @state in here
end
end

The way i see to get this to work:
class Animal
class << self
attr_accessor :state
end
@state=:alive

class Dog
class << self
attr_reader :state
end
def self.state
Animal.state
end
end
end

Animal.state=:dead
puts Animal::Dog.state

The classes aren’t related by inheritance, only namespace.

If you want to link them properly, you’ll need:

class Dog < Animal

Now the problem is… I know only the first class name in runtime so how
can i express Animal dynamically

This should work.

class Animal

  @state = :alive

  def self.state?
    @state.to_s
  end

  class Dog
    # I want to access the @state in here
    def initialize
      puts 'state is: '+Animal.state?
    end
  end

  @state = :dead

  class Cat
    # I want to access the @state in here
    def initialize
      puts 'state is: '+Animal.state?
    end
  end
end

Animal::Dog.new
Animal::Cat.new