From: Greg Millam <walker@...>
Date: 2002-12-18T08:24:50+09:00
Subject: Re: named parameters

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Daniel Carrera wrote:

> Is there a way to write a function with named parameters?
> Something like:
>
> Header { 'title' => "Somr Title"}
>
> Is there any other way?

Thi sis the way given in the Pickaxe.
http://ruby-central.com/book/tut_methods.html

> How about default values for parameters?  How can I do those?

Shown in the same page I gave above.

def foo(bar,baz="Baz")
  puts "Foo, #{bar}, #{baz]"
end

foo("hello")
--
Foo, hello, Baz

---

As for combining the two - having default values for hash arguments
passed, that's quite a bit tricker. only way I can think of is

def foo(params)
  params["baz"] = "Baz" unless params["baz"]
  params["bar"] = "beer" unless params["bar"]
  ...
end

The problem with this method is, if a programmer wants to pass 'nil' or
'false' or any non-true value as an argument, the default values would
overwrite that.

Hope that helps,
Greg

> Thanks a lot,
> Daniel Carrera
> Graduate Teaching Assistant.  Math Dept.
> University of Maryland.  (301) 405-5137
>
>

--
Greg Millam
walker at deafcode.com