From: RichardOnRails <RichardDummyMailbox58407@...>
Date: 2011-01-02T09:25:18+09:00
Subject: Undefined local var hash not trapped

The following program:

# K:\Analysis
# TestUndefinedLocalVar_hash.rb

a = []
a << "xyz"
a << hash
a << undefined

crashes on line 8 (a << undefined) rather than on line 7 (which
apparently appends a reference to the undefined "hash" to the array.
What causes this mythical creation of "hash"?  Is this behavior
defined anywhere?

If it matters,  the following explains how I encountered this problem:

I have a program which had been using a local var named "hash".  Use
of that name caused no problem.
However, I decided I should change the value assigned to hash,  so I
changed all references to it to "hash_string" ... all but one.  I
expected that after I made changes to the way hash_string was
computed,  my program would fail when the reference to the now-
undefined hash was encountered.  No such luck.

Thanks in Advance,
Richard