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Hi Randy,

Thank you for your reply.

I have already tried 7.times, which fixes the issue, but that is not
relevant to the issue I raised.

Let's remind ourselves of the most pertinent section of the code in
question:
return num, square if num > 5

At the last time when this code is encountered, num is equal to 6 (as is
displayed by the later 'puts num' statement output). The value for square
is to be outputted if num is greater than 5. As 6 is greater than 5 then
the value for square should be returned (which will be 36 when num is 6).

So it doesn't matter whether it's fixed with 7.times, what matters is what
happens when 6.times is used. What I'm trying to establish is whether there
is a bug in the current Ruby implementation, and workarounds to edge cases
like this will not help bugs to be fixed.

So, with this in mind, why does a value for square not get returned when
num  ?

Thanks in advance for your advice,
Tom

On 8 February 2012 17:43, Randy Coulman <rcoulman / gmail.com> wrote:

> I think you're seeing expected behavior here.
>
> A Ruby method will return the value of the last expression in the method,
> unless there is an earlier return statement.
>
> In the interest of "teaching you to fish", I'll just ask a couple of
> leading questions:
>
> What happens if you use 5.times?
>
> What happens if you use 7.times?
>
> Does that help?
>
> Randy
>
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Tom Clarke <tarclarke / gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > First time posting here. I'm a Ruby newbie, so apologies if this question
> > sounds dumb.
> >
> > I've found something I'm unable to explain. It's either a 'bug' or a
> > confusing feature. See code below (taken from rubylearning.com):
> > ---
> > "# p019mtdarry.rb
> >
> > # if you give return multiple parameters,
> > # the method returns them in an array
> > # The times method of the Integer class iterates block num times,
> > # passing in values from zero to num-1
> >
> > def mtdarry
> >  10.times do |num|
> >  square  um * num
> >  return num, square if num > 5
> >  end
> > end
> >
> >
> > # using parallel assignment to collect the return value
> > num, square  tdarry
> >
> > puts num
> > puts square"
> > ---
> > The output is meant to be as follows:
> > ---
> > ">ruby p019mtdarry.rb
> > 6
> > 36
> > >Exit code: 0"
> > ---
> > This is the output for the code above. However, if I change 10.times to
> > 6.times, the 'puts num' output is 6, and the square output is blank.
> >
> > The reason this is odd is, if the values for num go from 0 to 5, then the
> > output of puts num should be 5. However, as the output of puts num is 6,
> > then the puts square output should be 36, but instead it is blank.
> >
> > I've tested this on both Ruby 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 (p0). My question is,
> should
> > I raise this as a bug or have I missed something in my program analysis?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Tom
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Randy Coulman
> rcoulman / gmail.com
> Twitter: @randycoulman
>

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