From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-07-21T11:54:26+09:00
Subject: Re: What does this construct mean?

On Jul 20, 2005, at 7:20 PM, Casper wrote:

> To be honest, that the following two lines
>     puts (3+4).abs
>     puts(3+4).abs
> are semantically different *feels* very broken to me. My gut says that
> this is a vector for confusion and the introduction of bugs.
>
> That being said, I'm not ready to defend the statement that it *is*
> broken. I'll try to live with it for a while and see if I come around.
> :-)

In Ruby, parenthesis are sometimes optional, just as a convenience to  
you the coder.  In any midly complex case, just go ahead and include  
them and you never need to worry about this again.  I leave  
parenthesis off:

1.  No parameter attributes:  object.attr
2.  Boolean method tests:  if object.is_a? Whatever
3.  Simple IO:  puts "Printing this out #{(3 + 4).abs}..."

The rest of the time, just add them.  If you have to stop and think  
for even a second, it's time to add some parenthesis.  Then you never  
need worry again.

James Edward Gray II