diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'doc')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/syntax/assignment.rdoc | 12 |
1 files changed, 11 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/doc/syntax/assignment.rdoc b/doc/syntax/assignment.rdoc index 830ba39ff0..c371593fbe 100644 --- a/doc/syntax/assignment.rdoc +++ b/doc/syntax/assignment.rdoc @@ -70,7 +70,17 @@ have not assigned to one of these ambiguous names ruby will assume you wish to call a method. Once you have assigned to the name ruby will assume you wish to reference a local variable. -This leads to some potentially confusing code, for example: +The local variable is created when the parser encounters the assignment, not +when the assignment occurs: + + a = 0 if false # does not assign to a + + p local_variables # prints [:a] + + p a # prints nil + +The similarity between method and local variable names can lead to confusing +code, for example: def big_calculation 42 # pretend this takes a long time |