From: Tim Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2007-06-24T06:35:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Named/positional method args

darren kirby wrote:
>> def write_picture(outfile = nil, n = 1)
>>     
>
> Is there a clean way to accomplish my goal? Are there plans to give named 
> arguments to Ruby in the future? 
>   

The standard technique for doing this is to use a hash with symbols for 
the argument names. Remember Ruby collects up trailing hash assignments 
into a single hash, so you could do something like this;

write_picture(:outfile=>whatever, :n=>1)

Your method is defined like this:

def write_picture(args)
    outfile = args[:outfile]
    n = args[:n]
    ...
end

And, yes, I believe the current plan is to have named arguments in a 
future release of Ruby.

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