The Ruby Language

This chapter is a bottom-up look at the Ruby language. Unlike the previous tutorial, here we're concentrating on presenting facts, rather than motivating some of the language design features. We also ignore the built-in classes and modules where possible. These are covered in depth in Chapter 22, “Built-in Classes”.

If the content of this chapter looks familiar, it's because it should; we've covered just about all of this in the earlier tutorial chapters. Consider this chapter to be a self-contained reference to the core Ruby language.

Source Layout

Ruby programs are written in 7-bit ASCII. (Ruby also has extensive support for Kanji, using the EUC, SJIS, or UTF-8 coding system. If a code set other than 7-bit ASCII is used, the KCODE option must be set appropriately, as shown in the section on command-line options.)

Ruby is a line-oriented language. Ruby expressions and statements are terminated at the end of a line unless the statement is obviously incomplete—for example if the last token on a line is an operator or comma. A semicolon can be used to separate multiple expressions on a line. You can also put a backslash at the end of a line to continue it onto the next. Comments start with `#' and run to the end of the physical line. Comments are ignored during compilation.

Physical lines between a line starting with =begin and a line starting with =end are ignored by the compiler and may be used for embedded documentation (see Appendix A, “Embedded Documentation”).

Ruby reads its program input in a single pass, so you can pipe programs to the compiler's stdin.

If the compiler comes across a line anywhere in the source containing just “__END__”, with no leading or trailing whitespace, it treats that line as the end of the program—any subsequent lines will not be compiled. However, these lines can be read into the running program using the global IO object DATA.

BEGIN and END Blocks

Every Ruby source file can declare blocks of code to be run as the file is being loaded (the BEGIN blocks) and after the program has finished executing (the END blocks).

A program may include multiple BEGIN and END blocks. BEGIN blocks are executed in the order they are encountered. END blocks are executed in reverse order.

General Delimited Input

There are alternative forms of literal strings, arrays, regular expressions, and shell commands that are specified using a generalized delimited syntax. All these literals start with a percent character, followed by a single character that identifies the literal's type. These characters are summarized in Table 18.1; the actual literals are described in the corresponding sections later in this chapter.

Following the type character is a delimiter, which can be any character. If the delimiter is one of the characters “(”, “[”, “{”, or “<”, the literal consists of the characters up to the matching closing delimiter, taking account of nested delimiter pairs. For all other delimiters, the literal comprises the characters up to the next occurrence of the delimiter character.

Delimited strings may continue over multiple lines.

The Basic Types

The basic types in Ruby are numbers, strings, arrays, hashes, ranges, symbols, and regular expressions.

Integer and Floating Point Numbers

Ruby integers are objects of class Fixnum or Bignum. Fixnum objects hold integers that fit within the native machine word minus 1 bit. Whenever a Fixnum exceeds this range, it is automatically converted to a Bignum object, whose range is effectively limited only by available memory. If an operation with a Bignum result has a final value that will fit in a Fixnum, the result will be returned as a Fixnum.

Integers are written using an optional leading sign, an optional base indicator (0 for octal, 0x for hex, or 0b for binary), followed by a string of digits in the appropriate base. Underscore characters are ignored in the digit string.

You can get the integer value corresponding to an ASCII character by preceding that character with a question mark. Control and meta combinations of characters can also be generated using ?\C-x, ?\M-x, and ?\M-\C-x. The control version of ch is ch&0x9f, and the meta version is ch | 0x80. You can get the integer value of a backslash character using the sequence ?\\.

A numeric literal with a decimal point and/or an exponent is turned into a Float object, corresponding to the native architecture's double data type. You must follow the decimal point with a digit, as 1.e3 tries to invoke the method e3 in class Fixnum.

Strings

Ruby provides a number of mechanisms for creating literal strings. Each generates objects of type String. The different mechanisms vary in terms of how a string is delimited and how much substitution is done on the literal's content.

Single-quoted string literals ('stuff' and %q/stuff/) undergo the least substitution. Both convert the sequence \\ into a single backslash, and the form with single quotes converts \' into a single quote.

Double-quoted strings ("stuff", %Q/stuff/, and %/stuff/) undergo additional substitutions, shown in Table 18.2.

Strings can continue across multiple input lines, in which case they will contain newline characters. It is also possible to use here documents to express long string literals. Whenever Ruby parses the sequence <<identifier or <<quoted string, it replaces it with a string literal built from successive logical input lines. It stops building the string when it finds a line that starts with the identifier or the quoted string. You can put a minus sign immediately after the << characters, in which case the terminator can be indented from the left margin. If a quoted string was used to specify the terminator, its quoting rules will be applied to the here document; otherwise, double-quoting rules apply.

produces:

Adjacent single- and double-quoted strings in the input are concatenated to form a single String object.

Strings are stored as sequences of 8-bit bytes, (for use in Japan, the jcode library supports a set of operations of strings written with EUC, SJIS, or UTF-8 encoding. The underlying string, however, is still accessed as a series of bytes) and each byte may contain any of the 256 8-bit values, including null and newline. The substitution mechanisms in Table 18.2 allow nonprinting characters to be inserted conveniently and portably.

Every time a string literal is used in an assignment or as a parameter, a new String object is created.

produces:

For more information, see the documentation for class String.

Ranges

Outside the context of a conditional expression, expr..expr and expr...expr construct Range objects. The two-dot form is an inclusive range; the one with three dots is a range that excludes its last element. See the description of class Range for details. Also see the description of conditional expressions for other uses of ranges.

Arrays

Literals of class Array are created by placing a comma-separated series of object references between square brackets. A trailing comma is ignored.

Arrays of strings can be constructed using a shortcut notation, %w, which extracts space-separated tokens into successive elements of the array. A space can be escaped with a backslash. This is a form of general delimited input, described on pages 200–201.

Hashes

A literal Ruby Hash is created by placing a list of key/value pairs between braces, with either a comma or the sequence => between the key and the value. A trailing comma is ignored.

There is no requirement for the keys and/or values in a particular hash to have the same type.

Requirements for a Hash Key

The only restriction for a hash key is that it must respond to the message hash with a hash value, and the hash value for a given key must not change. This means that certain classes (such as Array and Hash, as of this writing) can't conveniently be used as keys, because their hash values can change based on their contents.

If you keep an external reference to an object that is used as a key, and use that reference to alter the object and change its hash value, the hash lookup based on that key may not work.

Because strings are the most frequently used keys, and because string contents are often changed, Ruby treats string keys specially. If you use a String object as a hash key, the hash will duplicate the string internally and will use that copy as its key. Any changes subsequently made to the original string will not affect the hash.

If you write your own classes and use instances of them as hash keys, you need to make sure that either (a) the hashes of the key objects don't change once the objects have been created or (b) you remember to call the Hash#rehash method to reindex the hash whenever a key hash is changed.

Symbols

A Ruby symbol is the internal representation of a name. You construct the symbol for a name by preceding the name with a colon. A particular name will always generate the same symbol, regardless of how that name is used within the program.

Other languages call this process “interning,” and call symbols “atoms.”

Regular Expressions

Regular expression literals are objects of type Regexp. They can be created by explicitly calling the Regexp.new constructor, or by using the literal forms, /pattern/ and %r{pattern}. The %r construct is a form of general delimited input (described on pages 200–201).

Regular Expression Options

A regular expression may include one or more options that modify the way the pattern matches strings. If you're using literals to create the Regexp object, then the options comprise one or more characters placed immediately after the terminator. If you're using Regexp.new, the options are constants used as the second parameter of the constructor.

Regular Expression Patterns

regular characters

All characters except ., |, (, ), [, \, ^, {, +, $, *, and ? match themselves. To match one of these characters, precede it with a backslash.

^

Matches the beginning of a line.

$

Matches the end of a line.

\A

Matches the beginning of the string.

\z

Matches the end of the string.

\Z

Matches the end of the string unless the string ends with a “\n”, in which case it matches just before the “\n”.

\b, \B

Match word boundaries and nonword boundaries respectively.

[characters]

A character class matches any single character between the brackets. The characters |, (, ), [, ^, $, *, and ?, which have special meanings elsewhere in patterns, lose their special significance between brackets. The sequences \nnn, \xnn, \cx, \C-x, \M-x, and \M-\C-x have the meanings shown in Table 18.2. The sequences \d, \D, \s, \S, \w, and \W are abbreviations for groups of characters, as shown in Table 5.1. The sequence c₁-c₂ represents all the characters between c₁ and c₂, inclusive. Literal ] or - characters must appear immediately after the opening bracket. An uparrow (^) immediately following the opening bracket negates the sense of the match—the pattern matches any character that isn't in the character class.

\d, \s, \w

Are abbreviations for character classes that match digits, whitespace, and word characters, respectively. \D, \S, and \W match characters that are not digits, whitespace, or word characters. These abbreviations are summarized in Table 5.1.

. (period)

Appearing outside brackets, matches any character except a newline. (With the /m option, it matches newline, too).

re*

Matches zero or more occurrences of re.

re+

Matches one or more occurrences of re.

re{m,n}

Matches at least “m” and at most “n” occurrences of re.

re?

Matches zero or one occurrence of re. The *, +, and {m,n} modifiers are greedy by default. Append a question mark to make them minimal.

re1|re2

Matches either re1 or re2. | has a low precedence.

(...)

Parentheses are used to group regular expressions. For example, the pattern /abc+/ matches a string containing an “a,” a “b,” and one or more “c”s. /(abc)+/ matches one or more sequences of “abc”. Parentheses are also used to collect the results of pattern matching. For each opening parenthesis, Ruby stores the result of the partial match between it and the corresponding closing parenthesis as successive groups. Within the same pattern, \1 refers to the match of the first group, \2 the second group, and so on. Outside the pattern, the special variables $1, $2, and so on, serve the same purpose.

Substitutions

#{...}

Performs an expression substitution, as with strings. By default, the substitution is performed each time a regular expression literal is evaluated. With the /o option, it is performed just the first time.

\0, \1, \2, ... \9, \&, \`, \', \+

Substitutes the value matched by the nth grouped subexpression, or by the entire match, pre- or postmatch, or the highest group.

Extensions

In common with Perl and Python, Ruby regular expressions offer some extensions over traditional Unix regular expressions. All the extensions are entered between the characters (? and ). The parentheses that bracket these extensions are groups, but they do not generate backreferences: they do not set the values of \1 and $1 etc.

(?# comment)

Inserts a comment into the pattern. The content is ignored during pattern matching.

(?:re)

Makes re into a group without generating backreferences. This is often useful when you need to group a set of constructs but don't want the group to set the value of $1 or whatever. In the example that follows, both patterns match a date with either colons or spaces between the month, day, and year. The first form stores the separator character in $2 and $4, while the second pattern doesn't store the separator in an external variable.

date = "12/25/01" date =~ %r{(\d+)(/|:)(\d+)(/|:)(\d+)} [$1,$2,$3,$4,$5] → ["12", "/", "25", "/", "01"] date =~ %r{(\d+)(?:/|:)(\d+)(?:/|:)(\d+)} [$1,$2,$3] → ["12", "25", "01"]

(?=re)

Matches re at this point, but does not consume it (also known charmingly as “zero-width positive lookahead”). This lets you look forward for the context of a match without affecting $&. In this example, the scan method matches words followed by a comma, but the commas are not included in the result.

str = "red, white, and blue" str.scan(/[a-z]+(?=,)/) → ["red", "white"]

(?!re)

Matches if re does not match at this point. Does not consume the match (zero-width negative lookahead). For example, /hot(?!dog)(\w+)/ matches any word that contains the letters “hot” that aren't followed by “dog”, returning the end of the word in $1.

(?>re)

Nests an independent regular expression within the first regular expression. This expression is anchored at the current match position. If it consumes characters, these will no longer be available to the higher-level regular expression. This construct therefore inhibits backtracking, which can be a performance enhancement. For example, the pattern /a.*b.*a/ takes exponential time when matched against a string containing an “a” followed by a number of “b”s, but with no trailing “a.” However, this can be avoided by using a nested regular expression /a(?>.*b).*a/. In this form, the nested expression consumes all the input string up to the last possible “b” character. When the check for a trailing “a” then fails, there is no need to backtrack, and the pattern match fails promptly.

require "benchmark" include Benchmark str = "a" + ("b" * 5000) bm(8) do |test| test.report("Normal:") { str =~ /a.*b.*a/ } test.report("Nested:") { str =~ /a(?>.*b).*a/ } end

produces:

user system total real Normal: 0.410000 0.000000 0.410000 ( 0.414915) Nested: 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ( 0.001190)

(?imx)

Turns on the corresponding “i,” “m,” or “x” option. If used inside a group, the effect is limited to that group.

(?-imx)

Turns off the “i,” “m,” or “x” option.

(?imx:re)

Turns on the “i,” “m,” or “x” option for re.

(?-imx:re)

Turns off the “i,” “m,” or “x” option for re.

Names

Ruby names are used to refer to constants, variables, methods, classes, and modules. The first character of a name helps Ruby to distinguish its intended use. Certain names, listed in Table 18.3, are reserved words and should not be used as variable, method, class, or module names.

In these descriptions, lowercase letter means the characters “a” though “z”, as well as “_”, the underscore. Uppercase letter means “A” though “Z,” and digit means “0” through “9.” Name characters means any combination of upper- and lowercase letters and digits.

A local variable name consists of a lowercase letter followed by name characters.

An instance variable name starts with an “at” sign (“@”) followed by an upper- or lowercase letter, optionally followed by name characters.

A class variable name starts with two “at” signs (“@@”) followed by an upper- or lowercase letter, optionally followed by name characters.

A constant name starts with an uppercase letter followed by name characters. Class names and module names are constants, and follow the constant naming conventions. By convention, constant variables are normally spelled using uppercase letters and underscores throughout.

Global variables, and some special system variables, start with a dollar sign (“$”) followed by name characters. In addition, there is a set of two-character variable names in which the second character is a punctuation character. These predefined variables are listed in the section Predefined Variables. Finally, a global variable name can be formed using “$-” followed by any single character.

Method names are described in the section “Method Definition”.

Variable/Method Ambiguity

When Ruby sees a name such as “a” in an expression, it needs to determine if it is a local variable reference or a call to a method with no parameters. To decide which is the case, Ruby uses a heuristic. As Ruby reads a source file, it keeps track of symbols that have been assigned to. It assumes that these symbols are variables. When it subsequently comes across a symbol that might be either a variable or a method call, it checks to see if it has seen a prior assignment to that symbol. If so, it treats the symbol as a variable; otherwise it treats it as a method call. As a somewhat pathological case of this, consider the following code fragment, submitted by Clemens Hintze.

produces:

During the parse, Ruby sees the use of “a” in the first print statement and, as it hasn't yet seen any assignment to “a,” assumes that it is a method call. By the time it gets to the second print statement, though, it has seen an assignment, and so treats “a” as a variable.

Note that the assignment does not have to be executed—Ruby just has to have seen it. This program does not raise an error.

Variables and Constants

Ruby variables and constants hold references to objects. Variables themselves do not have an intrinsic type. Instead, the type of a variable is defined solely by the messages to which the object referenced by the variable responds. (When we say that a variable is not typed, we mean that any given variable can at different times hold references to objects of many different types.)

A Ruby constant is also a reference to an object. Constants are created when they are first assigned to (normally in a class or module definition). Ruby, unlike less flexible languages, lets you alter the value of a constant, although this will generate a warning message.

produces:

Note that although constants should not be changed, you can alter the internal states of the objects they reference.

Assignment potentially aliases objects, giving the same object different names.

Scope of Constants and Variables

Constants defined within a class or module may be accessed unadorned anywhere within the class or module. Outside the class or module, they may be accessed using the scope operator, “::” prefixed by an expression that returns the appropriate class or module object. Constants defined outside any class or module may be accessed unadorned or by using the scope operator “::” with no prefix. Constants may not be defined in methods.

Global variables are available throughout a program. Every reference to a particular global name returns the same object. Referencing an uninitialized global variable returns nil.

Class variables are available throughout a class or module body. Class variables must be initialized before use. A class variable is shared among all instances of a class and is available within the class itself.

Class variables belong to the innermost enclosing class or module. Class variables used at the top level are defined in Object, and behave like global variables. Class variables defined within singleton methods belong to the receiver if the receiver is a class or a module; otherwise, they belong to the class of the receiver.

Instance variables are available within instance methods throughout a class body. Referencing an uninitialized instance variable returns nil. Each instance of a class has a unique set of instance variables. Instance variables are not available to class methods.

Local variables are unique in that their scopes are statically determined but their existence is established dynamically.

A local variable is created dynamically when it is first assigned a value during program execution. However, the scope of a local variable is statically determined to be: the immediately enclosing block, method definition, class definition, module definition, or top-level program. Referencing a local variable that is in scope but that has not yet been created generates a NameError exception.

Local variables with the same name are different variables if they appear in disjoint scopes.

Method parameters are considered to be variables local to that method.

Block parameters are assigned values when the block is invoked.

If a local variable (including a block parameter) is first assigned in a block, it is local to the block. If instead a variable of the same name is already established at the time the block executes, the block will inherit that variable.

A block takes on the set of local variables in existence at the time that it is created. This forms part of its binding. Note that although the binding of the variables is fixed at this point, the block will have access to the current values of these variables when it executes. The binding preserves these variables even if the original enclosing scope is destroyed.

The bodies of while, until, and for loops are part of the scope that contains them; previously existing locals can be used in the loop, and any new locals created will be available outside the bodies afterward.

Predefined Variables

The following variables are predefined in the Ruby interpreter. In these descriptions, the notation [r/o] indicates that the variables are read-only; an error will be raised if a program attempts to modify a read-only variable. After all, you probably don't want to change the meaning of true halfway through your program (except perhaps if you're a politician). Entries marked [thread] are thread local.

Many global variables look something like Snoopy swearing: $_, $!, $&, and so on. This is for “historical” reasons, as most of these variable names come from Perl. If you find memorizing all this punctuation difficult, you might want to have a look at the library file called “English,”, which gives the commonly used global variables more descriptive names.

In the tables of variables and constants that follow, we show the variable name, the type of the referenced object, and a description.

Exception Information

Pattern Matching Variables

These variables (except $=) are set to nil after an unsuccessful pattern match.

Input/Output Variables

Execution Environment Variables

Standard Objects

Global Constants

The following constants are defined by the Ruby interpreter.

Expressions

Single Terms

Single terms in an expression may be any of the following.

• Literal. Ruby literals are numbers, strings, arrays, hashes, ranges, symbols, and regular expressions. There are described in the “The Basic Types”.
• Shell Command. A shell command is a string enclosed in backquotes, or in a general delimited string starting with %x. The value of the string is the standard output of running the command represented by the string under the host operating system's standard shell. The execution also sets the $? variable with the command's exit status.
  filter = "*.c" files = `ls #{filter}` files = %x{ls #{filter}}
• Symbol Generator. A Symbol object is created by prefixing an operator, variable, constant, method, class, or module name with a colon. The symbol object will be unique for each different name but does not refer to a particular instance of the name, so the symbol for (say) :fred will be the same regardless of context. A symbol is similar to the concept of atoms in other high-level languages.
• Variable Reference or Constant Reference. A variable is referenced by citing its name. Depending on scope (see “Scope of Constants and Variables”), a constant is referenced either by citing its name or by qualifying the name, using the name of the class or module containing the constant and the scope operator (“::”).
  barney # variable reference APP_NAMR # constant reference Math::PI # qualified constant reference
• Method Invocation. The various ways of invoking a method are described starting in “Invoking a Method”.

Operator Expressions

Expressions may be combined using operators. Table 18.4 lists the Ruby operators in precedence order. The operators with a Y in the method column are implemented as methods, and may be overridden.

More on Assignment

The assignment operator assigns one or more rvalues to one or more lvalues. What is meant by assignment depends on each individual lvalue.

If an lvalue is a variable or constant name, that variable or constant receives a reference to the corresponding rvalue.

If the lvalue is an object attribute, the corresponding attribute setting method will be called in the receiver, passing as a parameter the rvalue.

If the lvalue is an array element reference, Ruby calls the element assignment operator (“[]=”) in the receiver, passing as parameters any indices that appear between the brackets followed by the rvalue. This is illustrated in Table 18.5.

Parallel Assignment

An assignment expression may have one or more lvalues and one or more rvalues. This section explains how Ruby handles assignment with different combinations of arguments.

1. If the last rvalue is prefixed with an asterisk and is an object of class Array, the rvalue is replaced with the elements of the array, with each element forming its own rvalue.
2. If the assignment contains multiple lvalues and one rvalue, the rvalue is converted into an Array, and this array is expanded into a set of rvalues as described in (1).
3. Successive rvalues are assigned to the lvalues. This assignment effectively happens in parallel, so that (for example) a,b=b,a swaps the values in “a” and “b.”
4. If there are more lvalues than rvalues, the excess will have nil assigned to them.
5. If there are more rvalues that lvalues, the excess will be ignored.
6. These rules are modified slightly if the last lvalue is preceded with an asterisk. This lvalue will always receive an array during the assignment. The array will consist of whatever rvalue would normally have been assigned to this lvalue, followed by the excess rvalues (if any).
7. If an lvalue is a parenthesized list, it is treated as a nested assignment statement, and the list is assigned from the corresponding rvalue as described by these rules.

The tutorial has examples in the section “Parallel Assignment”.

Block Expressions

Expressions may be grouped between begin and end. The value of the block expression is the value of the last expression executed.

Block expressions also play a role in exception handling, which is discussed in “Handling Exceptions”.

Boolean Expressions

Boolean expressions evaluate to a truth value. Some Ruby constructs (particularly ranges) behave differently when evaluated in a boolean expression.

Truth Values

Ruby predefines the globals false and nil. Both of these values are treated as being false in a boolean context. All other values are treated as being true.

And, Or, Not, and Defined?

The and and && operators evaluate their first operand. If false, the expression returns false; otherwise, the expression returns the value of the second operand.

The or and || operators evaluate their first operand. If true, the expression returns true; otherwise, the expression returns the value of the second operand.

The not and ! operators evaluate their operand. If true, the expression returns false. If false, the expression returns true.

The word forms of these operators (and, or, and not) have a lower precedence than the corresponding symbol forms (&&, ||, and !). See Table 18.4 for details.

The defined? operator returns nil if its argument, which can be an arbitrary expression, is not defined. Otherwise, it returns a description of that argument. For examples, see the “Defined?, And, Or, and Not” section in the tutorial.

Comparison Operators

The Ruby syntax defines the comparison operators ==, ===, <=>, <, <=, >, >=, =~, and the standard methods eql? and equal? (see Table 7.1). All of these operators are implemented as methods. Although the operators have intuitive meaning, it is up to the classes that implement them to produce meaningful comparison semantics. The library reference describes the comparison semantics for the built-in classes. The module Comparable provides support for implementing the operators ==, <, <=, >, >=, and the method between? in terms of <=>. The operator === is used in case expressions, described in the section “Case Expressions”.

Both == and =~ have negated forms, != and !~. Ruby converts these during syntax analysis: a!=b is mapped to !(a==b), and a!~b is mapped to !(a =~b). There are no methods corresponding to != and !~.

Ranges in Boolean Expressions

A range used in a boolean expression acts as a flip-flop. It has two states, set and unset, and is initially unset. On each call, the range cycles through the state machine shown in Figure 18.1. The range returns true if it is in the set state at the end of the call, and false otherwise.

The two-dot form of a range behaves slightly differently than the three-dot form. When the two-dot form first makes the transition from unset to set, it immediately evaluates the end condition and makes the transition accordingly. This means that if expr1 and expr2 both evaluate to true on the same call, the two-dot form will finish the call in the unset state. However, it still returns true for this call.

The difference is illustrated by the following code:

Regular Expressions in Boolean Expressions

If a single regular expression appears as a boolean expression, it is matched against the current value of the variable $_.

is equivalent to

If and Unless Expressions

The then keyword separates the body from the condition. It is not required if the body starts on a new line. The value of an if or unless expression is the value of the last expression evaluated in whichever body is executed.

If and Unless Modifiers

evaluates expression only if boolean-expression is true (false for unless).

Ternary Operator

returns expr1 if boolean-expression is true and expr2 otherwise.

Case Expressions

A case expression searches for a match by starting at the first (top left) comparison, performing comparison === target. When a comparison returns true, the search stops, and the body associated with the comparison is executed. case then returns the value of the last expression executed. If no comparison matches: if an else clause is present, its body will be executed; otherwise, case silently returns nil.

The then keyword separates the when comparisons from the bodies, and is not needed if the body starts on a new line.

Loops

executes body zero or more times as long as boolean-expression is true.

executes body zero or more times as long as boolean-expression is false.

In both forms, the do separates boolean-expression from the body, and may be omitted when the body starts on a new line.

The for loop is executed as if it were the following each loop, except that local variables defined in the body of the for loop will be available outside the loop, while those defined within an iterator block will not.

loop, which iterates its associated block, is not a language construct—it is a method in module Kernel.

While and Until Modifiers

If expression is anything other than a begin/end block, executes expression zero or more times while boolean-expression is true (false for until).

If expression is a begin/end block, the block will always be executed at least one time.

Break, Redo, Next, and Retry

break, redo, next, and retry alter the normal flow through a while, until, for, or iterator controlled loop.

break terminates the immediately enclosing loop—control resumes at the statement following the block. redo repeats the loop from the start, but without reevaluating the condition or fetching the next element (in an iterator). next skips to the end of the loop, effectively starting the next iteration. retry restarts the loop, reevaluating the condition.

Method Definition

defname is both the name of the method and optionally the context in which it is valid.

A methodname is either a redefinable operator (see Table 18.4) or a name. If methodname is a name, it should start with a lowercase letter (or underscore) optionally followed by upper- and lowercase letters, underscores, and digits. A methodname may optionally end with a question mark (“?”), exclamation point (“!”), or equals sign (“=”). The question mark and exclamation point are simply part of the name. The equals sign is also part of the name but additionally signals that this method is an attribute setter (described in the section “Writable Attributes”).

A method definition using an unadorned method name within a class or module definition creates an instance method. An instance method may be invoked only by sending its name to a receiver that is an instance of the class that defined it (or one of that class's subclasses).

Outside a class or module definition, a definition with an unadorned method name is added as a private method to class Object, and hence may be called in any context without an explicit receiver.

A definition using a method name of the form expr.methodname creates a method associated with the object that is the value of the expression; the method will be callable only by supplying the object referenced by the expression as a receiver. Other Ruby documentation calls these methods singleton methods.

Method definitions may not contain class, module, or instance method definitions. They may contain nested singleton method definitions. The body of a method acts as if it were a begin/end block, in that it may contain exception handling statements (rescue, else, and ensure).

Method Arguments

A method definition may have zero or more regular arguments, an optional array argument, and an optional block argument. Arguments are separated by commas, and the argument list may be enclosed in parentheses.

A regular argument is a local variable name, optionally followed by an equals sign and an expression giving a default value. The expression is evaluated at the time the method is called. The expressions are evaluated from left to right. An expression may reference a parameter that precedes it in the argument list.

The optional array argument must follow any regular arguments and may not have a default.

When the method is invoked, Ruby sets the array argument to reference a new object of class Array. If the method call specifies any parameters in excess of the regular argument count, all these extra parameters will be collected into this newly created array.

If an array argument follows arguments with default values, parameters will first be used to override the defaults. The remainder will then be used to populate the array.

The optional block argument must be the last in the list. Whenever the method is called, Ruby checks for an associated block. If a block is present, it is converted to an object of class Proc and assigned to the block argument. If no block is present, the argument is set to nil.

Invoking a Method

Initial parameters are assigned to the actual arguments of the method. Following these parameters may be a list of key => value pairs. These pairs are collected into a single new Hash object and passed as a single parameter.

Following these parameters may be a single parameter prefixed with an asterisk. If this parameter is an array, Ruby replaces it with zero or more parameters corresponding to the elements of the array.

A block may be associated with a method call using either a literal block (which must start on the same source line as the last line of the method call) or a parameter containing a reference to a Proc or Method object prefixed with an ampersand character. Regardless of the presence of a block argument, Ruby arranges for the value of the global function Kernel::block_given? to reflect the availability of a block associated with the call.

produces:

A method is called by passing its name to a receiver. If no receiver is specified, self is assumed.

The receiver checks for the method definition in its own class and then sequentially in its ancestor classes. The instance methods of included modules act as if they were in anonymous superclasses of the class that includes them. If the method is not found, Ruby invokes the method method_missing in the receiver. The default behavior defined in Kernel::method_missing is to report an error and terminate the program.

When a receiver is explicitly specified in a method invocation, it may be separated from the method name using either a period “.” or two colons “::”. The only difference between these two forms occurs if the method name starts with an uppercase letter. In this case, Ruby will assume that a receiver::Thing method call is actually an attempt to access a constant called Thing in the receiver unless the method invocation has a parameter list between parentheses.

The return value of a method is the value of the last expression executed.

A return expression immediately exits a method. The value of a return is nil if it is called with no parameters, the value of its parameter if it is called with one parameter, or an array containing all of its parameters if it is called with more than one parameter.

super

Within the body of a method, a call to super acts just like a call to that original method, except that the search for a method body starts in the superclass of the object that was found to contain the original method. If no parameters (and no parentheses) are passed to super, the original method's parameters will be passed; otherwise, the parameters to super will be passed.

Operator Methods

If the operator in an operator expression corresponds to a redefinable method (see Table 18.4), Ruby will execute the operator expression as if it had been written

Attribute Assignment

When the form receiver.attrname appears as an lvalue, Ruby invokes a method named attrname= in the receiver, passing rvalue as a single parameter.

Element Reference Operator

When used as an rvalue, element reference invokes the method [] in the receiver, passing as parameters the expressions between the brackets.

When used as an lvalue, element reference invokes the method []= in the receiver, passing as parameters the expressions between the brackets, followed by the rvalue being assigned.

Aliasing

creates a new name that refers to an existing method, operator, global variable, or regular expression backreference ($&, $', $', and $+). Local variables, instance variables, class variables, and constants may not be aliased. The parameters to alias may be names or symbols.

When a method is aliased, the new name refers to a copy of the original method's body. If the method is subsequently redefined, the aliased name will still invoke the original implementation.

Class Definition

A Ruby class definition creates or extends an object of class Class by executing the code in body. In the first form, a named class is created or extended. The resulting Class object is assigned to a global constant named classname. This name should start with an uppercase letter. In the second form, an anonymous (singleton) class is associated with the specific object.

If present, superexpr should be an expression that evaluates to a Class object that will be installed as the superclass of the class being defined. If omitted, it defaults to class Object.

Within body, most Ruby expressions are simply executed as the definition is read. However:

• Method definitions will register the methods in a table in the class object.
• Nested class and module definitions will be stored in constants within the class, not as global constants. These nested classes and modules can be accessed from outside the defining class using “::” to qualify their names.
  module NameSpace class Example CONST = 123 end end obj = NameSpace::Example.new a = NameSpace::Example::CONST
• The Module#include method will add the named modules as anonymous superclasses of the class being defined.

It is worth emphasizing that a class definition is executable code. Many of the directives used in class definition (such as attr and include) are actually simply private instance methods of class Module.

Chapter 19, “Classes and Objects”, describes in more detail how Class objects interact with the rest of the environment.

Creating Objects from Classes

Class Class defines the instance method Class#new, which:

• Creates an object of the class of the receiver (classexpr in the syntax example).
• Sets that object's type to be the receiver.
• Invokes the instance method initialize in the newly created object, passing it any arguments originally passed to new.

If a class definition overrides the class method new without calling super, no objects of that class can be created.

Class Attribute Declarations

Class attribute declarations are technically not part of the Ruby language: they are simply methods defined in class Module that create accessor methods automatically.

Module Definitions

A module is basically a class that cannot be instantiated. Like a class, its body is executed during definition and the resulting Module object is stored in a constant. A module may contain class and instance methods and may define constants and class variables. As with classes, module methods are invoked using the Module object as a receiver, and constants are accessed using the “::” scope resolution operator.

Mixins—Including Modules

A module may be included within the definition of another module or class using the include method. The module or class definition containing the include gains access to the constants, class variables, and instance methods of the module it includes.

If a module is included within a class definition, the module's constants, class variables, and instance methods are effectively bundled into an anonymous (and inaccessible) superclass for that class. In particular, objects of the class will respond to messages sent to the module's instance methods.

A module may also be included at the top level, in which case the module's constants, class variables, and instance methods become available at the top level.

Module Functions

Although include is useful for providing mixin functionality, it is also a way of bringing the constants, class variables, and instance methods of a module into another namespace. However, functionality defined in an instance method will not be available as a module method.

The method Module#module_function solves this problem by taking one or more module instance methods and copying their definitions into corresponding module methods.

The instance method and module method are two different methods: the method definition is copied by module_function, not aliased.

Access Control

Ruby defines three levels of protection for module and class constants and methods:

• Public. Accessible to anyone.
• Protected. Can be invoked only by objects of the defining class and its subclasses.
• Private. Can be called only in functional form (that is, with an implicit self as the receiver). Private methods therefore can be called only in the defining class and by direct descendents within the same object.

Each function can be used in two different ways.

1. If used with no arguments, the three functions set the default access control of subsequently defined methods.
2. With arguments, the functions set the access control of the named methods and constants.

Access control is enforced when a method is invoked.

Blocks, Closures, and Proc Objects

A code block is a set of Ruby statements and expressions between braces or a do/end pair. The block may start with an argument list between vertical bars. A code block may appear only immediately after a method invocation. The start of the block must be on the same logical line as the end of the invocation.

Braces have a high precedence; do has a low precedence. If the method invocation has parameters that are not enclosed in parentheses, the brace form of a block will bind to the last parameter, not to the overall invocation. The do form will bind to the invocation.

Within the body of the invoked method, the code block may be called using the yield method. Parameters passed to the yield will be assigned to arguments in the block using the rules of parallel assignment. The return value of the yield is the value of the last expression evaluated in the block.

A code block remembers the environment in which it was defined, and it uses that environment whenever it is called.

Proc Objects

Code blocks are converted into objects of class Proc using the methods Proc.new and Kernel#proc, or by associating the block with a method's block argument.

The Proc constructor takes an associated block and wraps it with enough context to be able to re-create the block's environment when it is subsequently called. The Proc#call instance method then allows you to invoke the original block, optionally passing in parameters. The code in the block (and the associated closure) remains available for the lifetime of the Proc object.

If the last argument in a method's argument list is prefixed with an ampersand (“&”), any block associated with calls to that method will be converted to a Proc object and assigned to that parameter.

Exceptions

Ruby exceptions are objects of class Exception and its descendents (a full list of the built-in exceptions is given in Figure 22.1).

Raising Exceptions

The Kernel::raise method raises an exception.

The first form reraises the exception in $! or a new RuntimeError if $! is nil. The second form creates a new RuntimeError exception, setting its message to the given string. The third form creates an exception object by invoking the method exception on its first argument. It then sets this exception's message and backtrace to its second and third arguments. Class Exception and objects of class Exception contain factory methods called exception, so an exception class name or instance can be used as the first parameter to raise.

When an exception is raised, Ruby places a reference to the Exception object in the global variable $!.

Handling Exceptions

Exceptions may be handled within the scope of a begin/end block.

A block may have multiple rescue clauses, and each rescue clause may specify zero or more parameters. A rescue clause with no parameter is treated as if it had a parameter of StandardError.

When an exception is raised, Ruby scans up the call stack until it finds an enclosing begin/end block. For each rescue clause in that block, Ruby compares the raised exception against each of the rescue clause's parameters in turn; each parameter is tested using $!.kind_of?(parameter). If the raised exception matches a rescue parameter, Ruby executes the body of the rescue and stops looking. If a matching rescue clause ends with => and a variable name, the variable is set to $!.

Although the parameters to the rescue clause are typically the names of Exception classes, they can actually be arbitrary expressions (including method calls) that return an appropriate class.

If no rescue clause matches the raised exception, Ruby moves up the stack frame looking for a higher-level begin/end block that matches. If an exception propagates to the top level without being rescued, the program terminates with a message.

If an else clause is present, its body is executed if no exceptions were raised in initial code. Exceptions raised during the execution of the else clause are not captured by rescue clauses in the same block as the else.

If an ensure clause is present, its body is always executed as the block is exited (even if an uncaught exception is in the process of being propagated).

Retrying a Block

The retry statement can be used within a rescue clause to restart the enclosing begin/end block from the beginning.

Catch and Throw

The method Kernel::catch executes its associated block.

The method Kernel::throw interrupts the normal processing of statements.

When a throw is executed, Ruby searches up the call stack for the first catch block with a matching symbol or string. If it is found, the search stops, and execution resumes past the end of the catch's block. If the throw was passed a second parameter, that value is returned as the value of the catch. Ruby honors the ensure clauses of any block expressions it traverses while looking for a corresponding catch.

If no catch block matches the throw, Ruby raises a NameError exception at the location of the throw.