[ruby-core:53351] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7998] "def" should return a value (the symbol of the method name) instead of nil

Issue #7998 has been updated by kernigh (George Koehler).


=begin
I have a problem with this feature.

 module Frog
   private def self.sound
     "Ribbit!"
   end
 end

With this feature, def..end would return :sound, then private :sound would set Frog#sound to private.  This is wrong.  I defined Frog::sound, not Frog#sound.  Surprise!  There is no way for private :sound to know that I defined a metamethod, not an instance method; because def..end only returned a Symbol, not the whole definition.  With this feature, "private def" only works for instance methods, not for metamethods.
=end

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Feature #7998: "def" should return a value (the symbol of the method name) instead of nil
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7998#change-37547

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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