From: Marcelo Alvim <malvim@...>
Date: 2006-09-27T15:31:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Ahh, the hazards of an interpretive language...

On 9/27/06, Pete <neverland@jwgibbs.cchem.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>  def tt x
>   if x == :this
>    return "got this"
>   elseif x == :that
>    return "got that"
>   end
>   ## ... more actions if neither is true
>  end

I've never fallen into that trap but, as a complete newbie to Ruby, I
was bound to, sooner or later. The problem is, even after reading your
code and explanation, I wasn't able to really 'get' what was
happening. So I fired up irb, did some testing and finally understood.

So, for the sake of other newbies like me, I'll post a code that is
similar to yours, with little 'didatic' changes. I know it's just what
you were trying to explain, I'm only putting it another way in order
to (hopefully) help someone who, like me, couldn't 'get it' the first
time:

def tt(x)
  if x == :this
    return "got this"
    zoinks #notice how the interpreter doesn't
    zinks   #care about these lines
    return "got that" #neither does he care about this one
  end
  return "got something else"
end

So:
tt(:this) #=> "got this"
tt(:anything_else) #=> "got something else"

Thanks, Pete, for bringing that up. I'm sure I'd fall into this one at
some point. :)

Cheers,
Alvim.