From: "Marcin Mielżyński" <lopx@...>
Date: 2006-09-24T02:20:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Riddle me this (a question about expressions)

Patrick Toomey wrote:
> Hello all,
>   I am new to Ruby and am toying around with the language to get a feel 
> for the expression ubiquity in ruby.  Anyway, explain to me the 
> following.  The below bits of code have no real relevance; they are 
> merely illustrative of my question.  The first declaration works as 
> expected; the return value is 9.  The second declaration doesn't run at 
> all.  I get a "void value expression" error.  Is the runtime looking 
> into my if statement, realizing that there is no ability for x to get 
> set and failing?  Obviously the code is ridiculous, but it seems odd to 
> me that it would not even run.  Why does the interpreter care that x 
> will never get set if the function will return cleanly none the less?
> 
> def foo()
>   x = 0
>   x = if 3 > 4
>           8
>         else
>           9
>         end
>   return x
> end
> 
> def foo()
>   x = 0
>   x = if 3 > 4
>           return 8
>         else
>           return 9
>         end
>   return x
> end
> 

I think the return statement has void context itself

check out this - in fact what you are doing is:

return (return "foo")

lopex