From: Matthew Smillie <M.B.Smillie@...>
Date: 2006-08-10T01:30:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is this returning nil?


On Aug 9, 2006, at 17:23, Dark Ambient wrote:

> class User
>
>    def initialize(level, status)
>        @level = level
>        @status = status
>    end
>
>    def finda
>        if @status == "active"
>            print #{@level}
>        else
>        puts "user not exist"
>        end
>    end
> end
>
> user1 = User.new(1, "active")
> user2 = User.new(1, "inactive")
> user3 = User.new(2, "active")
> user4 = User.new(3, "inactive")
>
> user1.finda
>
> Something wrong ..not sure
> TIA
> Stuart

Because methods return the value of the last statement.  In this  
case, both 'puts' and 'print' return nil, the actual output to the  
screen is separate from the return value:

print "Hello\n"
Hello
=> nil
puts "Hello"
Hello
=> nil

My guess/advice would be to return the actual string you're  
eventually going to output, and deal with the actual output elsewhere  
in the code.

matthew smillie.