From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2011-01-27T07:32:48+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby treatment of method defs

James Byrne wrote in post #977707:
> I presume that there exists a strong reason why this construct remains
> in  the language.  However, I have not been able to find an explanation
> as to why this behaviour is desired so if someone here could inform me
> as to why it is retained then I would be much obliged.

Here is one recent explanation:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/941686#977592

g = 123 is an assignment to a local variable. (Local variables are not 
objects; they are slots on the stack frame, which hold references to 
objects)

foo.g = 123 is syntactic sugar for a method call. The method's name is 
"g=" and the argument is 123. It's the same as foo.send(:g=, 123)

A bareword "g", such as in "puts g", could be either a local variable or 
a method call. The choice is made at parse time, which is before run 
time.

What this gives you is uncluttered syntax with efficiency. There's no 
need to declare g as a variable, nor do you need to use parentheses to 
call function f(). But because the distinction is made ahead-of-time, it 
doesn't have to be decided every time the code is executed in a loop.

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