From: ThoML <micathom@...>
Date: 2008-07-02T05:17:09+09:00
Subject: Re: nested methods good or bad design

> Is it bad practice to have nested methods?

Like Eiffel, Smalltalk, Java, Ruby doesn't have nested methods
unlike ... uhm, Python, Scheme etc. (Everything IIRC and AFAIK which
doesn't mean much ATM. :)

Example:

def a
    def b
        p 1
    end
    b
end

a
=> 1
b
=> 1

a and b are defined at the same level. This trick can be used to
dynamically (re)define methods at runtime and can be handy at times.

You could create a normal method and make that private.