Class Variable Access and Assignment

[Graham]

Thanks to all of you for your reply's i had no idea it would get this
sort of response,
i've read through most of the posts and it seems that its a active
topic.

My question remains however, i suppose i'm not familiar with how this
functions in
other languages, but what is the common way of referring to a class
variable.

is <class>.<var> the norm?
or <instance>.<var> the norm.

I just seems to me that <instance>.<var> shouldn't defer to the class
variable if
an instance variable of the same name does not exists, it should, at
least how i
understand it raise an exception.

Is my thinking way off here?

Graham