I wrote this mini test-program to save arrays in an array:
arr = Array.new
def w(num,text)
arr << [num, text]
end
w(0123, "was")
w(3453, "hallo")
w(0123, "umbau")
w(0342, "farruko")
arr.each do |f|
puts f.first.to_s + f.last
end
But somehow i get the error:
arraytest.rb:5:in `w': undefined local variable or method `arr' for main:Object
(NameError)
from arraytest.rb:8:in `<main>'
What do i wrong? Thanks
You defined arr as a variable
arr = Array.new
but the variable is not visible inside the scope of the w method. The first time you call the method, you get the error.
w(0123, "was")
If you want to edit arr, you need to pass it as argument to the function.
def w(arr, num, text)
arr << [num, text]
end
You could workaround the issue by using a dynamic definition method such as define_method passing a lambda, for example
define_method(:w) do |num,text|
arr << [num, text]
end
The lambda has access to the surrounding environment, but in most cases this is an issue, not an advantage. The lambda will prevent garbage collection and you may end up with a memory leak very hard to debug.
This talk from Aaron Patterson has some very interesting (advanced) details.
Bottom line: if you need to define a simple method, pass the value as argument. Don't use fancy metaprogramming, especially if you are new to Ruby and you don't know the difference.
Write your code as below if you want to access top level local variable arr inside the method #w.
arr = Array.new
define_method(:w) do |num,text|
arr << [num, text]
end
w(0123, "was")
w(3453, "hallo")
w(0123, "umbau")
w(0342, "farruko")
arr.each do |f|
puts f.first.to_s + f.last
end
# >> 83was
# >> 3453hallo
# >> 83umbau
# >> 226farruko
def creates a new scope, so the local variable arr you are seeing inside the method w,is scoped only to that method. The top level local variable arr is different than the one inside the method w. Now if you want to use that outside local variable arr, use Module#define_method, which supports block. In Ruby blocks are closure so you will be having access to the surroundings.
arr is not in scope within the method you defined.
You can fix this either by initialising it as a variable within the method scope, or by storing it as #arr—an instance variable. Which approach is better depends on the usage scenario.
Note that if you are using an instance variable you can lazily initialise within the method as follows:
def w(num, text)
(#arr ||= []) << [num, text]
end
Arup's answer is nearly correct, but he missed one important detail.
Module#define_method is a private instance method, and can't be invoked by current object(here, main).
Therefore, that code will end up generating the error:
undefined method `define_method' for main:Object
Solve this problem, by dispatch the method by Object#send:
arr = Array.new
Kernel.send(:define_method, :w) do |num,text|
arr << [num, text]
end
w(0123, "was")
w(3453, "hallo")
w(0123, "umbau")
w(0342, "farruko")
arr.each do |f|
puts f.first.to_s + f.last
end
# >> 83was
# >> 3453hallo
# >> 83umbau
# >> 226farruko
Related
I recently started learning ruby and i am confused between instance variable and local variable and class variable. so , i recently written code which will find the largest palindrome in 1000 prime numbers.
code is:
def prime_large(number)
arr_prime = []
Prime.each(number) do |x|
new_arr_prime = arr_prime.push(x.to_s)
updated = new_arr_prime.select { |y| y.reverse == y }
end
p updated.max
end
p prime_large(1000)
error i got is:
undefined local variable or method `updated' for main:Object (NameError)
I know that updated is a local variable of prime so i can't access it outside it but i changed the code by replacing it with #updated as below:
def prime_large(number)
arr_prime = []
Prime.each(number) do |x|
new_arr_prime = arr_prime.push(x.to_s)
#updated = new_arr_prime.select { |y| y.reverse == y }
end
p #updated.max
end
p prime_large(1000)
after changing it , i got the output:
"929"
"929"
in my code , without creating a class how my instance variable ( #updated) is working . i am confused between local and instance variable . can anyone please explain me the differences and how they work ?
In your first example you created a local variable updated, that is only accessible within the scope of the block it is defined in. Meaning, it is available only within Prime.each(number) do end block.
In your second example you created instance variable #updated.
without creating a class how my instance variable ( #updated) is
working
It is because in Ruby everything occurs in the context of some object. Even though you did not created a class, you are being in the top-level context, in the context of object main.
Thus, any instance variables defined within top-level are instance variables of this object main.
So going back to your issue, to overcome it you'll want to just define the updated local variable outside the Prime.each(number) do end block:
def prime_large(number)
arr_prime = []
updated = nil # initialize local varialbe
Prime.each(number) do |x|
new_arr_prime = arr_prime.push(x.to_s)
updated = new_arr_prime.select { |y| y.reverse == y } # assign new value
end
p updated.max
end
p prime_large(1000)
To test it you can open irb or pry and check it yourself:
self # the object in the context of which you are currently
#=> main
self.class # main is an instance of class Object, any methods defined
# within main are added to Object class as instance methods
#=> Object
instance_variables # list of it's instance variables, none yet created
#=> []
#variable = 1 # create and instance variable
#=> 1
instance_variables # now created variable occurs in the list of current object's instance variables
#=> [:#variable]
def hello; :hello end # define method
#=> :hello
self.class.public_instance_methods(false) # list instance methods defined in Object
#=> [:hello]
What you now want to read about is lexical scopes in Ruby.
I am studying Ruby and can't figure this out. I have an exercise where I have to add a method into a Library class which contains games. Each game is an instance of a class Game. So the solution is the following:
class Library
attr_accessor :games
def initialize(games)
self.games = games
end
def has_game?(search_game)
for game in games
return true if game == search_game
end
false
end
def add_game(game)
#games << game
end
end
I can't understand how << works in this case. Is this a bitwise left shift? Does Library class just assumes that games is an array, I believe I can pass anything to the Library class when I am initialising, single game or an array of games?
When you have:
#games << game
<< is actually a method. If it is a method, you ask, why isn't it written in the normal way:
#games.<<(game)
? You could, in fact, write it that way and it would work fine. Many Ruby methods have names that are symbols. A few others are +, -, **, &, || and %. Ruby knows you'd prefer writing 2+3 instead of 2.+(3), so she let's you do the former (and then quietly converts it to the latter). This accommodation is often referred to as "syntactic sugar".
<< is one of #games' methods (and game is <<'s argument), because #games is the receiver of the method << (technically :<<). Historically, it's called the "receiver" because with OOP you "send" the method to the receiver.
To say that << is a method of #games means that << is an instance method of #games's class. Thus, we have:
#games.methods.include?(:<<) #=> true
#games.class.instance_methods.include?(:<<) #=> true
I expect #games is an instance of the class Array. Array's instance methods are listed here. For example:
#games = [1,2,3]
#games.class #=> [1,2,3].class => Array
#games << 4 #=> [1,2,3,4]
#games.<<(5) #=> [1,2,3,4,5]
On the other hand, suppose #games were an instance of Fixnum. For example:
#games = 7
#games.class #=> 7.class => Fixnum
which in binary looks like this:
#games.to_s(2) #=> "111"
Then:
#games << 2 #=> 28
28.to_s(2) #=> "11100"
because << is an instance method of the class Fixnum.
As a third example, suppose #games were a hash:
#games = { :a => 1 }
#games.class #=> { :a => 1 }.class => Hash
Then:
#games << { :b => 2 }
#=> NoMethodError: undefined method `<<' for {:a=>1}:Hash
The problem is clear from the error message. The class Hash has no instance method <<.
One last thing: consider the method Object#send. Recall that, at the outset, I said that methods are sent to receivers. Instead of writing:
#games = [1,2,3]
#games << 4 #=> [1,2,3,4]
you could write:
#games.send(:<<, 4) #=> [1, 2, 3, 4]
This is how you should think of methods and receivers. Because send is an instance method of the class Object, and all objects inherit Object's instance methods, we see that send is "sending" a method (:<<, which can alternatively be expressed as a string, "<<") and its arguments (here just 4) to the receiver.
There are times, incidentally, when you must use send to invoke a method. For one, send works with private and protected methods. For another, you can use send when you want to invoke a method dynamically, where the name of the method is the value of a variable.
In sum, to understand what method does in:
receiver.method(*args)
look for the doc for the instance method method in receiver's class. If you Google "ruby array", for example, the first hit will likely be the docs for the class Array.
It's not a bitwise left shift, it's "shovel" operator. You, probably, know that in Ruby operators are implemented as methods, i.e. when you write
1 + 1
what is actually going on:
1.+(1)
The same is true for "shovel" (<<) operator, it's just a method on Array class, that appends its arguments to the end of the array and returns the array itself, so it can be chained:
>> arr = []
=> []
>> arr << 1
=> [1]
>> arr
=> [1]
>> arr << 2 << 3
=> [1, 2, 3]
It looks like #games is an array. The shift operator for an array adds an element to the end of the array, similar to array#push.
ary << obj → ary
Append—Pushes the given object on to the end of this array. This expression returns the array itself, so several appends may be chained together.
My goal is to replace methods in the String class with other methods that do additional work (this is for a research project). This works for many methods by writing code in the String class similar to
alias_method :center_OLD, :center
def center(args*)
r = self.send(*([:center_OLD] + args))
#do some work here
#return something
end
For some methods, I need to handle a Proc as well, which is no problem. However, for the scan method, invoking it has the side effect of setting special global variables from the regular expression match. As documented, these variables are local to the thread and the method.
Unfortunately, some Rails code makes calls to scan which makes use of the $& variable. That variable gets set inside my version of the scan method, but because it's local, it doesn't make it back to the original caller which uses the variable.
Does anyone know a way to work around this? Please let me know if the problem needs clarification.
If it helps at all, all the uses I've seen so far of the $& variable are inside a Proc passed to the scan function, so I can get the binding for that Proc. However, the user doesn't seem to be able to change $& at all, so I don't know how that will help much.
Current Code
class String
alias_method :scan_OLD, :scan
def scan(*args, &b)
begin
sargs = [:scan_OLD] + args
if b.class == Proc
r = self.send(*sargs, &b)
else
r = self.send(*sargs)
end
r
rescue => error
puts error.backtrace.join("\n")
end
end
end
Of course I'll do more things before returning r, but this even is problematic -- so for simplicity we'll stick with this. As a test case, consider:
"hello world".scan(/l./) { |x| puts x }
This works fine both with and without my version of scan. With the "vanilla" String class this produces the same thing as
"hello world".scan(/l./) { puts $&; }
Namely, it prints "ll" and "ld" and returns "hello world". With the modified string class it prints two blank lines (since $& was nil) and then returns "hello world". I'll be happy if we can get that working!
You cannot set $&, because it is derived from $~, the last MatchData.
However, $~ can be set and that actually does what you want.
The trick is to set it in the block binding.
The code is inspired by the old Ruby implementation of Pathname.
(The new code is in C and does not need to care about Ruby frame-local variables)
class String
alias_method :scan_OLD, :scan
def scan(*args, &block)
sargs = [:scan_OLD] + args
if block
self.send(*sargs) do |*bargs|
Thread.current[:string_scan_matchdata] = $~
eval("$~ = Thread.current[:string_scan_matchdata]", block.binding)
yield(*bargs)
end
else
self.send(*sargs)
end
end
end
The saving of the thread-local (well, actually fiber-local) variable seems unnecessary since it is only used to pass the value and the thread never reads any other value than the last one set. It probably is there to restore the original value (most likely nil, because the variable did not exist).
One way to avoid thread-locals at all is to create a setter of $~ as a lambda (but it does create a lambda for each call):
self.send(*sargs) do |*bargs|
eval("lambda { |m| $~ = m }", block.binding).call($~)
yield(*bargs)
end
With any of these, your example works!
I wrote simple code simulating the problem:
"hello world".scan(/l./) { |x| puts x }
"hello world".scan(/l./) { puts $&; }
class String
alias_method :origin_scan, :scan
def scan *args, &b
args.unshift :origin_scan
#mutex ||= Mutex.new
begin
self.send *args do |a|
break if !block_given?
#mutex.synchronize do
p $&
case b.arity
when 0
b.call
when 1
b.call a
end
end
end
rescue => error
p error, error.backtrace.join("\n")
end
end
end
"hello world".scan(/l./) { |x| puts x }
"hello world".scan(/l./) { puts $& }
And found the following. The change of containment of the variable $& became inside a :call function, i.e. on 3-rd step before :call $& contains a valid value, but inside the block it becomes the invalid. I guess this become due to the singularity stack and variable restoration during the change process/thread context, because, probably, :call function can't access the :scan local state.
I see two variants: the first is to avoid to use global variables in the specific function redefinitions, and second, may to dig sources of ruby more deeply.
Why does
a = [].tap do |x|
x << 1
end
puts "a: #{a}"
work as expected
a: [1]
but
b = [].tap do |x|
x = [1]
end
puts "b: #{b}"
doesn't
b: []
?
The reason why the second snippet does not change the array is the same why this snippet:
def foo(x)
x = [1]
end
a = []
foo(a)
does not change variable a. Variable x in your code is local to the scope of the block, and because of that you can assign anything to it, but the assignment won't be visible outside (Ruby is a pass-by-value language).
Of course, blocks have also closures on the local variables where they were declared, so this will work:
def foo(x)
yield(x)
end
b = []
foo(123) do |x|
b = [1]
end
p b # outputs [1]
The first method put 1 on the end of an empty array. In the same way you cant say that an empty array is equal to 1. Rather you would try and replicate it...
b = [].tap do |x|
x.unshift(1)
end
This is just an example yet have a look at the method call you can use on an Array by typing.
Array.methods.sort
All the best and Good luck
This is slightly unrelated -- but that [].tap idiom is horrible. You should not use it. Even many of the people who used it in rails code now admit it's horrible and no longer use it.
Do not use it.
Given any object in Ruby (on Rails), how can I write a method so that it will display that object's instance variable names and its values, like this:
#x: 1
#y: 2
#link_to_point: #<Point:0x10031b298 #y=20, #x=38>
(Update: inspect will do except for large object it is difficult to break down the variables from the 200 lines of output, like in Rails, when you request.inspect or self.inspect in the ActionView object)
I also want to be able to print <br> to the end of each instance variable's value so as to print them out nicely on a webpage.
the difficulty now seems to be that not every instance variable has an accessor, so it can't be called with obj.send(var_name)
(the var_name has the "#" removed, so "#x" becomes "x")
Update: I suppose using recursion, it can print out a more advanced version:
#<Point:0x10031b462>
#x: 1
#y: 2
#link_to_point: #<Point:0x10031b298>
#x=38
#y=20
I would probably write it like this:
class Object
def all_variables(root=true)
vars = {}
self.instance_variables.each do |var|
ivar = self.instance_variable_get(var)
vars[var] = [ivar, ivar.all_variables(false)]
end
root ? [self, vars] : vars
end
end
def string_variables(vars, lb="\n", indent="\t", current_indent="")
out = "#{vars[0].inspect}#{lb}"
current_indent += indent
out += vars[1].map do |var, ivar|
ivstr = string_variables(ivar, lb, indent, current_indent)
"#{current_indent}#{var}: #{ivstr}"
end.join
return out
end
def inspect_variables(obj, lb="\n", indent="\t", current_indent="")
string_variables(obj.all_variables, lb, indent, current_indent)
end
The Object#all_variables method produces an array containing (0) the given object and (1) a hash mapping instance variable names to arrays containing (0) the instance variable and (1) a hash mapping…. Thus, it gives you a nice recursive structure. The string_variables function prints out that hash nicely; inspect_variables is just a convenience wrapper. Thus, print inspect_variables(foo) gives you a newline-separated option, and print inspect_variables(foo, "<br />\n") gives you the version with HTML line breaks. If you want to specify the indent, you can do that too: print inspect_variables(foo, "\n", "|---") produces a (useless) faux-tree format instead of tab-based indenting.
There ought to be a sensible way to write an each_variable function to which you provide a callback (which wouldn't have to allocate the intermediate storage); I'll edit this answer to include it if I think of something. Edit 1: I thought of something.
Here's another way to write it, which I think is slightly nicer:
class Object
def each_variable(name=nil, depth=0, parent=nil, &block)
yield name, self, depth, parent
self.instance_variables.each do |var|
self.instance_variable_get(var).each_variable(var, depth+1, self, &block)
end
end
end
def inspect_variables(obj, nl="\n", indent="\t", sep=': ')
out = ''
obj.each_variable do |name, var, depth, _parent|
out += [indent*depth, name, name ? sep : '', var.inspect, nl].join
end
return out
end
The Object#each_variable method takes a number of optional arguments, which are not designed to be specified by the user; instead, they are used by the recursion to maintain state. The given block is passed (a) the name of the instance variable, or nil if the variable is the root of the recursion; (b) the variable; (c) the depth to which the recursion has descended; and (d), the parent of the current variable, or nil if said variable is the root of the recursion. The recursion is depth-first. The inspect_variables function uses this to build up a string. The obj argument is the object to iterate through; nl is the line separator; indent is the indentation to be applied at each level; and sep separates the name and the value.
Edit 2: This doesn't really add anything to the answer to your question, but: just to prove that we haven't lost anything in the reimplementation, here's a reimplementation of all_variables in terms of each_variables.
def all_variables(obj)
cur_depth = 0
root = [obj, {}]
tree = root
parents = []
prev = root
obj.each_variable do |name, var, depth, _parent|
next unless name
case depth <=> cur_depth
when -1 # We've gone back up
tree = parents.pop(cur_depth - depth)[0]
when +1 # We've gone down
parents << tree
tree = prev
else # We're at the same level
# Do nothing
end
cur_depth = depth
prev = tree[1][name] = [var, {}]
end
return root
end
I feel like it ought to be shorter, but that may not be possible; because we don't have the recursion now, we have to maintain the stack explicitly (in parents). But it is possible, so the each_variable method works just as well (and I think it's a little nicer).
I see... Antal must be giving the advanced version here...
the short version then probably is:
def p_each(obj)
obj.instance_variables.each do |v|
puts "#{v}: #{obj.instance_variable_get(v)}\n"
end
nil
end
or to return it as a string:
def sp_each(obj)
s = ""
obj.instance_variables.each do |v|
s += "#{v}: #{obj.instance_variable_get(v)}\n"
end
s
end
or shorter:
def sp_each(obj)
obj.instance_variables.map {|v| "#{v}: #{obj.instance_variable_get(v)}\n"}.join
end
This is a quick adaptation of a simple JSON emitter I wrote for another question:
class Object
def inspect!(indent=0)
return inspect if instance_variables.empty?
"#<#{self.class}:0x#{object_id.to_s(16)}\n#{' ' * indent+=1}#{
instance_variables.map {|var|
"#{var}: #{instance_variable_get(var).inspect!(indent)}"
}.join("\n#{' ' * indent}")
}\n#{' ' * indent-=1}>"
end
end
class Array
def inspect!(indent=0)
return '[]' if empty?
"[\n#{' ' * indent+=1}#{
map {|el| el.inspect!(indent) }.join(",\n#{' ' * indent}")
}\n#{' ' * indent-=1}]"
end
end
class Hash
def inspect!(indent=0)
return '{}' if empty?
"{\n#{' ' * indent+=1}#{
map {|k, v|
"#{k.inspect!(indent)} => #{v.inspect!(indent)}"
}.join(",\n#{' ' * indent}")
}\n#{' ' * indent-=1}}"
end
end
That's all the magic, really. Now we only need some simple defaults for some types where a full-on inspect doesn't really make sense (nil, false, true, numbers, etc.):
module InspectBang
def inspect!(indent=0)
inspect
end
end
[Numeric, Symbol, NilClass, TrueClass, FalseClass, String].each do |klass|
klass.send :include, InspectBang
end
Like this?
# Get the instance variables of an object
d = Date.new
d.instance_variables.each{|i| puts i + "<br />"}
Ruby Documentation on instance_variables.
The concept is commonly called "introspection", (to look into oneself).