Ruby Blocks
Ruby Code blocks (called closures in other languages) are definitely one of the coolest features of Ruby and are chunks of code between braces or between do- end that you can associate with method invocations, almost as if they were parameters. A Ruby block is a way of grouping statements, and may appear only in the source adjacent to a method call; the block is written starting on the same line as the method call's last parameter (or the closing parenthesis of the parameter list). The code in the block is not executed at the time it is encountered. Instead, Ruby remembers the context in which the block appears (the local variables, the current object, and so on) and then enters the method.
The Ruby standard is to use braces for single-line blocks and do- end for multi-line blocks. Keep in mind that the braces syntax has a higher precedence than the do..end syntax.
Matz says that any method can be called with a block as an implicit argument. Inside the method, you can call the block using the yield keyword with a value.
Once you have created a block, you can associate it with a call to a method. Usually the code blocks passed into methods are anonymous objects, created on the spot. For example, in the following code, the block containing puts "Hello" is associated with the call to a method greet.
If the method has parameters, they appear before the block.
A method can then invoke an associated block one or more time using the Ruby yield statement.
Program p022codeblock.rb illustrates what we have just discussed.
The output is:
If you provide a code block when you call a method, then inside the method, you can yield control to that code block - suspend execution of the method; execute the code in the block; and return control to the method body, right after the call to yield.
You can provide parameters to the call to yield: these will be passed to the block. Within the block, you list the names of the arguments to receive the parameters between vertical bars (|).
The program p023codeblock2.rb illustrates the same.
The output is:
Note that the code in the block is not executed at the time it is encountered by the Ruby interpreter. Instead, Ruby remembers the context in which the block appears and then enters the method.
A code block's return value (like that of a method) is the value of the last expression evaluated in the code block. This return value is made available inside the method; it comes through as the return value of yield.
block_given? returns true if yield would execute a block in the current context. Refer to the following example:
Summary
I have listed down all the important points you need to remember after you have completed the following topics: Method Missing, Ruby ri Tool, More on Strings, Simple Constructs, Ruby Blocks.
Note: The Ruby Logo is Copyright (c) 2006, Yukihiro Matsumoto. I have made extensive references to information, related to Ruby, available in the public domain (wikis and the blogs, articles of various Ruby Gurus) and much of the material on rubylearning.com and in the course at rubylearning.org is drawn primarily from the Programming Ruby book, available from The Pragmatic Bookshelf. The following books have also been referred to: Ruby for Rails, The Ruby Programming Language, Beginning Ruby, Learn to Program, Ruby Cookbook and The Ruby Way; my acknowledgment and thanks to all of them.
