On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Henrik Schmidt wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I'm fairly new to Ruby, so bear with me. Anyway, on with the question.
>
> What is the benefit of being able to omit parentheses on a method call? IMHO, 
> parentheses improves readability; I can instantly discern, whether something 
> is a method call or a variable. It would seem to me, that readability is, at 
> least, part of the reason for the @-prefix on instance variables, thus making 
> it difficult for a human reader to confuse them with local variables. Why not 
> force a similar convention on method calls, namely explicit parentheses?
>
> In addition, this feature allows you to do stuff like this:
>
> def foo
>  42
> end
>
> foo            # -> 42
> foo = 1 if false
> foo            # -> nil
>
> I generally like the language but dead code with side effects makes me 
> nervous.
>
> Could anyone explain to me, why it's a good idea to have the option of 
> omitting parentheses on a method call?

exit
raise
fail
fork
gets
map{|no_paren| no_paren}
string.to_i
class.new
alias_method
public
private
protected

etc.


-a
-- 
in order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is
likely to hurt. -- wei wu wei