From: Steven Brown <swbrown@...>
Date: 2001-08-14T00:06:18+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19639] Local variables - can {|a| ..} be made to have 'a' local?

I'm in the process of learning ruby and I've got a quick question for you 
guru folk..  Is there a way to make {|variable| ...} blocks such that the 
'variable' is local to that block only?  Eg, so the following code would 
work instead of 'a' winding up 5:

a = 9
[1,3,5].each {|a| puts a}
print "should be 9: ", a, "\n";

As a side question, is there anything like 'const' in ruby to assure one 
that a function won't decide to modify the variable passed to it?