From: jeremy@... (Jeremy Henty)
Date: 2001-09-11T21:26:35+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:21113] Re: nested method definition!!!

In article <3B9B133D.E796CE77@sympatico.ca>,
 Mark <markb1@sympatico.ca> writes:

>I keep getting a "nested method definition" error. Although I have
>failed to find the documentation for this specific error, I presume it's
>when you do the following:
>def foo(val1)
>    def bar(val2)
>    end
>end
>
>The strange this is, I'm not doing anything like this. Maybe something
>in Ruby is broken. I have looked over my code so many times (and it's
>only 190 lines), and I can't see a problem.

Every time I have seen this it's because I have messed up the grouping
in some non-obvious way so that definitions are indeed nested even
though I intended nothing of the kind.  This can be really hard to
spot just by looking at the code (in my experience anyway).  I'd
recommend the old divide and conquer approach: strip the code down to
a minimal fragment that generates the error.  At some point the typo
just leaps out at you (again in my experience).

Can't say anything more useful without a code fragment to examine, I'm
afraid.

Regards, 

Jeremy Henty