From: Sam Duncan <sduncan@...>
Date: 2011-04-28T05:35:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Help me understand this SIMPLE Ruby code, using puts in a def

This is where irb is handy. The short of it is that in your first 
example a string is returned on which you call upcase. In your second 
example the thing returned is the result of puts, which is nil.

 > irb
ruby-1.9.2-p0 > foo = puts 'foo'
foo
  => nil
ruby-1.9.2-p0 > foo
  => nil
ruby-1.9.2-p0 > foo.upcase
NoMethodError: undefined method `upcase' for nil:NilClass

Does that help?

Sam


On 28/04/11 08:25, Fily Salas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was practicing ruby and accidentally came across something that got me
> thinking (nothing important but I want to know why).
>
> Why does the example-1 works and not example-2, if all I'm doing is
> moving the puts?
>
> Example-1:
> def message
>    "this is working"
> end
> puts message.upcase
>
>
> Example-2:
> def message
>    puts "this is working"
> end
> message.upcase
>
> Can someone explain this a little bit? I could just ignore it but I
> would like to know the reason.
>
> Thanks
>