From: 7stud -- <dolgun@...>
Date: 2007-09-19T05:11:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Variable / Method Ambiguity

David A. Black wrote:
> No, because there's no such variable in scope. The second time through
> the loop, there's no assignment to a, and the first variable a has
> gone out of scope. So the only thing that "a" could mean, outside of
> an assignment, is the method a.
> 

That doesn't seem to bear out.  If you switch the if statement around so 
that the assignment happens first:

def x
    print "Function 'x' called\n"
    99
end

for i in 1..2
    if i == 1
        x = 10
        print "x=", x, "\n"
    else
        print "x=", x, "\n"
    end
end


the output is:

x=10
x=10

The second time through that loop, there is no assignment to x and the 
previous x has gone out of scope, yet the else clause's use of x does 
not result in a method call.

As p. 329 in pickaxe2 carefully explains, it is a ruby parsing rule that 
determines what x means.  As I read the rule, and as Daniel explains, 
and as the two examples show(the 'a' example and the 'x' example), the 
rule is: if there is any code that has x=val on a line before the use of 
x, then x will be interpreted as a variable.  If there is no assignment 
to x on a line higher in the code, then x will be interpreted as a 
method call.



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