Ruby Blocks
Ruby Code blocks (called closures in other languages) are definitely one of the coolest features of Ruby and are chunks of code between braces or between do..end that you can associate with method invocations, almost as if they were parameters. A Ruby block is a way of grouping statements, and may appear only in the source adjacent to a method call; the block is written starting on the same line as the method call's last parameter (or the closing parenthesis of the parameter list). The code in the block is not executed at the time it is encountered. Instead, Ruby remembers the context in which the block appears (the local variables, the current object, and so on) and then enters the method.
The Ruby standard is to use braces for single-line blocks and do..end for multi-line blocks. Keep in mind that the braces syntax has a higher precedence than the do..end syntax. Braces have a high precedence; do has a low precedence. If the method invocation has parameters that are not enclosed in parentheses, the brace form of a block will bind to the last parameter, not to the overall invocation. The do form will bind to the invocation.
Matz says that any method can be called with a block as an implicit argument. Inside the method, you can call the block using the yield keyword with a value.
Also, as you will soon learn, blocks can have their own arguments. There are many methods in Ruby that iterate over a range of values. Most of these iterators are written in such a way as to be able to take a code block as part of their calling syntax. The method can then yield control to the code block (i.e. execute the block) during execution as many times as is necessary for the iteration to complete (e.g. if we are iterating over array values, we can execute the block as many times as there are array values etc.).
Once you have created a block, you can associate it with a call to a method. Usually the code blocks passed into methods are anonymous objects, created on the spot. For example, in the following code, the block containing puts "Hello" is associated with the call to a method greet.
If the method has parameters, they appear before the block.
A method can then invoke an associated block one or more time using the Ruby yield statement. Thus any method that wants to take a block as a parameter can use the yield keyword to execute the block at any time.
Program p022codeblock.rb illustrates what we have just discussed.
The output is:
If you provide a code block when you call a method, then inside the method, you can yield control to that code block - suspend execution of the method; execute the code in the block; and return control to the method body, right after the call to yield. If no code block is passed and yield is called, Ruby raises an exception:
You can provide parameters to the call to yield: these will be passed to the block. Within the block, you list the names of the arguments to receive the parameters between vertical bars (|).
The program p023codeblock2.rb illustrates the same.
The output is:
Note that the code in the block is not executed at the time it is encountered by the Ruby interpreter. Instead, Ruby remembers the context in which the block appears and then enters the method.
A code block's return value (like that of a method) is the value of the last expression evaluated in the code block. This return value is made available inside the method; it comes through as the return value of yield.
block_given? returns true if the function is passed with a block which can be yielded. Refer to the following example:
Block Variables
Let us see what happens in the following example when a variable outside a block is x and a block parameter is also named x.
The output is:
You will observe that after the block has executed, x outside the block is the original x. Hence the block parameter x was local to the block.
Next observe what happens to x in the following example:
The output is:
Since x is not a block parameter here, the variable x is the same inside and outside the block.
From Ruby 1.9 on-wards, blocks introduced their own scope for the block parameters only. This is illustrated by the following example:
The output is:
In the above block, a new feature is being used: block local variable. In short, block local variables shield a block from manipulating variables outside of its scope. This prevents a block from unintentionally clobbering any variables outside its scope. If you don't want to clobber variables, use block local variables for the variables your block creates.
The syntax for a block local variable is simple. Put a semicolon after the normal block parameter list, then list the variable you want as block local variables. For example, if the block takes two variables a and b, and uses to local variables x and y, the parameter list would look like this: |a,b; x,y|.
Summary
I have listed down all the important points you need to remember after you have completed the following topics: Ruby ri Tool, More on Strings, Simple Constructs, Ruby Blocks.
Note: The Ruby Logo is Copyright (c) 2006, Yukihiro Matsumoto. I have made extensive references to information, related to Ruby, available in the public domain (wikis and the blogs, articles of various Ruby Gurus), my acknowledgment and thanks to all of them. Much of the material on rubylearning.github.io and in the course at rubylearning.org is drawn primarily from the Programming Ruby book, available from The Pragmatic Bookshelf.