In Ruby, why is a method invocation not be able to be treated as a unit when "do" and "end" is used?
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by Jian Lin
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Published on 2010-05-04T04:19:01Z
Indexed on
2010/05/04
4:48 UTC
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The following question is related to the question "Ruby Print Inject Do Syntax". My question is, can we insist on using do
and end
and make it work with puts
or p
?
This works:
a = [1,2,3,4]
b = a.inject do |sum, x|
sum + x
end
puts b # prints out 10
so, is it correct to say, inject
is a class method of the Array class, which takes a block of code, and then returns a number. If so, then it should be no different from calling a function and getting back a return value:
b = foo(3)
puts b
or
b = circle.getRadius()
puts b
In the above two cases, we can directly say
puts foo(3)
puts circle.getRadius()
so, there is no way to make it work directly by using the following 2 ways:
a = [1,2,3,4]
puts a.inject do |sum, x|
sum + x
end
but it gives
ch01q2.rb:7:in `inject': no block given (LocalJumpError)
from ch01q2.rb:4:in `each'
from ch01q2.rb:4:in `inject'
from ch01q2.rb:4
grouping the method call using ( )
doesn't work either:
a = [1,2,3,4]
puts (a.inject do |sum, x|
sum + x
end)
and this gives:
ch01q3.rb:4: syntax error, unexpected kDO_BLOCK, expecting ')'
puts (a.inject do |sum, x|
^
ch01q3.rb:4: syntax error, unexpected '|', expecting '='
puts (a.inject do |sum, x|
^
ch01q3.rb:6: syntax error, unexpected kEND, expecting $end
end)
^
finally, the following version works:
a = [1,2,3,4]
puts a.inject { |sum, x|
sum + x
}
but why doesn't the grouping of the method invocation using ( )
work in the earlier example? What if a programmer insist that he uses do
and end
, can it be made to work?
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