From: "gcao (Guoliang Cao)" <gcao99@...>
Date: 2013-03-09T13:11:19+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:53252] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7998] "def" should return a value (the symbol of the method name) instead of nil


Issue #7998 has been updated by gcao (Guoliang Cao).


This is a nice addition indeed and I remember I asked for it too in the
past. One usage could be method annotation like what is done in some
command line library:

desc 'Do something'
def do_something
  ...
end

The above code looks nice but I believe its underlying code involves
using method_added and is fragile when method_added is also used for
other functionalities.

If def returns method name, then a comma is all we need to remove the
meta-programming complexity.

desc 'Do something',
def do_something
  ...
end

I really wish one day this will be added to Ruby.
----------------------------------------
Feature #7998: "def" should return a value (the symbol of the method name) instead of nil
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7998#change-37412

Author: pmarreck (Peter Marreck)
Status: Open
Priority: Normal
Assignee: 
Category: 
Target version: next minor


The C code that implements Ruby method definitions already creates a symbol corresponding to the method name.

I propose that the "def... end" block returns this symbol.

This would allow the following elegant Ruby code:

protected def foo(); end

private def bar(); end

since "protected" and "private" already take symbol arguments.

I estimate that this would be extremely easy to implement while creating extremely minimal existing code impact.

I proposed this idea to the #ruby IRC channel on freenode.net and it was received very well, they encouraged me to file this ticket! Thank you for considering.


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