From: Henrik Schmidt <nospam@...>
Date: 2006-09-20T18:15:12+09:00
Subject: the point of omitting parentheses

Hi there,

I'm fairly new to Ruby, so bear with me. Anyway, on with the question.

What is the benefit of being able to omit parentheses on a method call? 
IMHO, parentheses improves readability; I can instantly discern, whether 
something is a method call or a variable. It would seem to me, that 
readability is, at least, part of the reason for the @-prefix on 
instance variables, thus making it difficult for a human reader to 
confuse them with local variables. Why not force a similar convention on 
method calls, namely explicit parentheses?

In addition, this feature allows you to do stuff like this:

def foo
   42
end

foo            # -> 42
foo = 1 if false
foo            # -> nil

I generally like the language but dead code with side effects makes me 
nervous.

Could anyone explain to me, why it's a good idea to have the option of 
omitting parentheses on a method call?

Best Regards,
   Henrik Schmidt