From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2010-10-08T05:17:42+09:00
Subject: Re: named parameters in ruby?

xiMera wrote:
> A.new
> a.set_vars( :a => 1. :b =>2 )
> do_some a

I think you mean:

  a = A.new
  a.set_vars ( :a => 1, :b => 2)
  do_some a

How is this better than

  do_some :a => 1, :b => 2

?

Note that if you are using ruby 1.9, then you can also write

  do_some a: 1, b: 2

which (from the caller's point of view) is getting pretty close to named 
parameters.

At the callee's side, multiple assignment keeps things pretty clean:

def do_some(v={})
  a, b, c = v[:a], v[:b], v[:c]
end

Or you can use values_at, which is a bit longer in this case.

  a, b, c = v.values_at(:a, :b, :c)

Note that ruby needs to know at *parse* time that a,b and c are local 
variables, so it can reserve slots for them in the activation record, 
and this assignment achieves that.

Any solution using eval to create local variables would be very 
inefficient, if it could be made to work at all.

irb(main):010:0> def foo
irb(main):011:1> eval("x = 5")
irb(main):012:1> puts x
irb(main):013:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):014:0> foo
NameError: undefined local variable or method `x' for main:Object
  from (irb):12:in `foo'
  from (irb):14
  from :0
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.