Ruby's method arguments up to 1.8 are positional, with some support for hashes:

  foo(bar, baz, :a => a, :b => b)

Your argument list must look something like:

  def foo(bar, baz, opts = {}) ...

In Ruby 1.9, there is support for named arguments; I haven't started
using them (I'm still targeting 1.8), so I can't quite tell if they
are a call-only mechanism or a definition mechanism. The call would
look something like:

  foo(bar, baz, b: b, a: a)

I remember reading somewhere that hash arguments may be unsupported
moving forward, but I don't know what's the status on that.

-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue / gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin / halostatue.ca