pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

Mastering the Art of Using Blocks as a Ruby Programmer

Blocks are an important element of the Ruby programming language. You need to learn more about them to be a proficient Ruby programmer. Let’s delve into some more details on them.

THE BLOCKS IN RUBY DEVELOPMENT

In Ruby, handling blocks of code is very interesting. The methods you write can receive a block of code. From there, they do some very interesting things. Before we move on to this from receiving blocks in a method, I would like to give an example of a block:

5.times do |val|

  puts val

end

The block in the example above starts with do and ends with end. Blocks can also be delimited with the curly brackets { }, although we do this usually when the block is a single line:

5.times { |val| puts val }

The most interesting thing about this syntax is that the methods of your objects can receive blocks. You would need to type the following:

def cool_method

 yield

end

cool_method do

  puts “Hello world”

end

Running the above script will result in a “Hello World” screen print. What happened is that when Ruby finds the keyword “yield”, it runs the block of code that was sent to the method. In this case the screen print of “Hello world”. What’s up? This has N cases in which it can be useful to you, infinity.

This was just an example, but there are many more interesting things. You can pass parameters to the block and you can validate that your method received a block.

METAPROGRAMMING

I know that many languages have this characteristic, Ruby is one of them, and it’s something very interesting. We can define meta programming as the ability of a language to modify a program at runtime, which means auto generating code. A much vaguer definition is to say that with a language that supports metaprogramming we can write code that generates code. For example:

[ “user” , “editor” , “admin” ].each_with_index do |user_level,index|

  define_method(“is_#{user_level}?”) do

    return true if user.permission_level == index  

  end

end

The snippet of previous code defines the methods is_user?, is_editor?, is_admin? without us writing them. The method defines_method does just that. It will define a method. That’s why we say it’s code that generates code.

This part of the language usually comes once you’ve learned many other things from Ruby, and of course, it’s not limited to the example I gave earlier, that’s just a part.

CONCLUSION

This is an article with 4 interesting features of a language that was designed to *make programmers happy, seriously. We wanted to give you a better overview of Ruby blocks, so that you can use them to get the most of your programming experience with Ruby.

The last feature I want to mention is that the best thing about Ruby is the community. It’s a big community, willing to help. There are a lot of very good Open Source projects (like Rails). There are a lot of forums with solutions to a lot of doubts and there are a lot of resources to learn how to use Ruby.

If you were interested in the language I invite you to follow the Ruby course of Easy Code or if you do not have problems with English. Follow the RubyMonk exercises where you can learn from the most basic to meta programming, advanced handling of blocks and things like that with exercises in the browser 🙂  You can also try Ruby in TryRuby where you learn the basics of the language in your browser.

Anyway, you can leave your suggestions, doubts and clarifications in the comments section, I hope you liked the post.

Filed Under: Articles

Latest Articles

Site Design Information

The current PCTechGuide design uses CSS layout to achieve a clean look, with clear navigation options to make the information easy to find and easy to read. Launched in December 2008, we hope the change is considered for-the-better by regular visitors, and that new visitors will find a … [Read More...]

Digital Cameras vs. Film

Despite the massive strides it has made in recent years, the conventional wisdom remains that though digital cameras offer advantages in term of flexibility, when it comes to picture quality they still fall a significant way behind that of … [Read More...]

How to Remove Unlimited Defender

THREAT OVERVIEW: Unlimited Defender is a fake security application that has been designed by cyber criminals with the objective of stealing money from unsuspecting users. This is not a real security client reason why once detected it is recommended to conduct all the necessary steps to … [Read More...]

Revolutionize Your Internet Experience with Orbi 960 – The Ultimate WiFi System

In a world where seamless connectivity is essential, slow and unreliable internet connections are a major problem. Whether you are running a business, … [Read More...]

Do You Need a VPN When Trading Cryptocurrency?

There’s no doubt that the biggest global industries in 2023 are tech-driven, while there remains a significant crossover between many of these … [Read More...]

Goodbye Bitcoin: the 3 alternative cryptocurrencies that have great upside potential, according to experts

Bitcoin has been a very lucrative investment for people that got into it early. One report from The Motley Fool pointed out that $10 of bitcoin … [Read More...]

Self-driving cars face their Achilles’ heel and may be targets of hackers

The market for self-driving cars is booming. Customers spent $22.22 billion on these autonomous vehicles in 2021 and they will likely spend more in … [Read More...]

How to avoid scams with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies got a bad reputation when scams multiplied like ants on a piece of cake. Even today many people associate bitcoin and other … [Read More...]

WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING AND WHAT ARE ITS MAIN BENEFITS?

Users are Increasingly using cloud computing to store their information, which is replacing local storage. The business digitization process goes … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

Google Apps For Business is Making Strides

Google has evolved over the years. It was once only a search engine, and a darn good one. But, the company behind the search engine has evolved into a … [Read More...]

How to Remove Avast Enhanced Protection Mode

Easiest Removal Option: Remote Repair: Paying an expert to remove this threat is always the easiest option. It's also the most expensive. … [Read More...]

Outlook Gets Some New Features

Microsoft Outlook has stood the test of time as a personal information manager and email client. It has faced some stiff competition in the past, but … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2023 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors