From: yermej <yermej@...>
Date: 2007-11-18T01:20:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Weird behavior with hpricot and variable assignment

On Nov 17, 8:06 am, ridcully <goo...@ridcully.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Could someone please help me to understand the difference of:
>
> html = Hpricot( "<div><div></div></div>" )
> (html/'/div').each do |item|
>   x = (item/'/div')[0].to_html
>   p x
> end
>
> output: "<div></div>"
>
> and
>
> html = Hpricot( "<div><div></div></div>" )
> (html/'/div').each do |item|
>   p (item/'/div')[0].to_html
> end
>
> gives "undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)" in line
> 3

Try your second example in irb and you'll get a warning (or I do,
anyway):

(irb):5: warning: don't put space before argument parentheses

This means you're essentially doing this:

(p(item/'/div'))[0].to_html

and since p returns nil, you're calling [] on nil. Try this instead:

p((item/'/div')[0].to_html)