From: Mike Wilson <wmwilson01@...>
Date: 2005-10-21T09:46:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Fun with function definitions

On 10/20/05, Anders H�ckersten <chucky@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote:
> Me and a friend realised earlier today that this is actually a legal
> Ruby program:
> foo(def foo(a=nil)
>         puts "hello"
>     end)
> foo
>
> The fact that this works seems to be a side effect of Ruby's semantics
> rather than an intended feature, but maybe it's actually useful to be
> able to do this? I can't think of any (practical) use of it -
> suggestions are welcome.
>
> Regards,
> Anders
>

That's pretty interesting.  It makes for some interesting recursion too :)

irb(main):021:0> foo(def foo(a=nil)
irb(main):022:2>     puts a
irb(main):023:2>     a += 1 if not a.nil?
irb(main):024:2>     return a
irb(main):025:2>   end)
nil
=> nil
irb(main):026:0> foo(foo(foo(foo(foo(foo(1))))))
1
2
3
4
5
6
=> 7