From: Ivan Salazar <ivan.salazarv@...>
Date: 2007-06-07T13:55:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Globals not incrementing inside block

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This one is a very common mistake when someone is new to functional
languages specially when having some procedural language experience.
Try looking closer at the Ruby language documentation or at any other
online or book reference.

Many methods in functional languages don't have side effects (don't
modify the object), take this as an example:

>> string = "beer"
=> "beer"
>> string.chop
=> "bee"
>> string
=> "beer"                       # As you see, the string value is the same
>> string.chop!
=> "bee"
>> string
=> "bee"                        #The method call with the bang (!) is the
clue
>> string = string.chop #Reassigning
=> "be"
>> string                       #Guess what? Yes, string has a new value
=> "be"

In brief, to modify an object you make a call to a method with
side effects or reassign the object to the new one created after the method
call.

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