From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-03-27T00:24:56+09:00
Subject: Re: gets gets

On Mar 26, 2007, at 3:17 AM, John Joyce wrote:

> I'm a little surprised at this.
> In irb, I tried puts gets gets.
> Why? I don't know.
> but basically, gets gets, seems to almost act like a heredoc!
> myString = gets gets
> puts myString

It's not surprising at all.  First, let's insert the parentheses so  
we can see it as Ruby does:

   puts(gets(gets()))

Now we see that the right-most gets() call must be resolved first.   
Assuming you enter the String "END", that will be passed to the left- 
most gets() call as a parameter.

The parameter to gets() is an input record divider, so it will read  
ahead until it encounters "END" instead of the traditional "\n".   
This is the heredoc-like behavior you are seeing.

The result of the second gets() is then printed by puts().

Hope that explains what you are seeing.

James Edward Gray II