From: glenn_m_smith@... (Glenn)
Date: 2004-05-02T05:54:01+09:00
Subject: Ruby Newbie (ooh, that rhymes!) - When do I use do/end, when {}?

Hello all

First some waffle as this is my first post...

I picked up on Ruby just a few days ago.  Somebody in an unrelated
thread on an unrelated forum mentioned "A Ruby programmer is a happy
programmer".  So I decided to find out more.

My usual work is currently with Visual Basic and PL/SQL, but I like to
have a general purpose scripting language for all those extra jobs
that VB would be a bit too much of a sledgehammer for!

I've tried Perl (hateful messy syntax, gave up)
Looked at Python... not for me
Don't like VBScript because of it's "slightly different to VB" nature
(and besides, it's Windows-only and I use both Windows and Solaris at
work)
etc.

Ruby, as I'm sure you lot have already have discovered, really hits
the spot.  I read somewhere of it being called "a delightful
language", and it's very true.  Nice syntax, nice and clean OO
features, everything I could want and easy to get started with.  So
please, Matz and everybody else involved, stick with it, make it even
more feature-rich (but don't damage the core syntax!), and let me
throw VB away forever!!!  (well, I can live in hope!).

Anyway, to my first question....


I've read the User Guide and other docs on the net, but I'm a little
unsure as to whether I can ALWAYS substitute the DO/END with curly
brackets for a block?  For example, I've only ever seen referenced to
hash definitions using curlies.  What's the rule here?  Is it purely
down to preference?