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Deepak Rohan Sekar
9,634 PointsDifferent ways to write a method
In ruby, what is the difference between the two below method definitions?
def get_name(name)
@name = name
end
def get_name=(name)
@name = name
end
5 Answers
Jason Anders
Treehouse Moderator 145,860 PointsHmm. I apologize.
I've just came back to Ruby and really don't remember this syntax. Apparently it is a "Setter Method" or "Virtual Attribute." I'm sorry I can't explain it better as I need to research this a bit more myself. But, here are a few links that may be of help:
Treehouse Post from Grace Kelly.
Ruby Cookbook from Safari books online.
Hope these help.
Andrei Burichita
9,989 Points"Method names in Ruby may contain upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers, underscores _ and the punctation signs !, ?, =.
A method name can't begin with a number, and the characters !, ? and = can only appear at the end.
Non-ASCII characters can be used in a method name, but this can lead to very confusing situations and should not be common practice. "
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10542354/what-are-the-restrictions-for-method-names-in-ruby
Jason Anders
Treehouse Moderator 145,860 PointsHey Deepak,
As far as I know, the second one is incorrect syntax and will result in an error from the compiler. Arguments are passed into a method with parenthesis only with no equal sign.
Where did you see this syntax? I've never seen that before.
Deepak Rohan Sekar
9,634 Pointshttps://teamtreehouse.com/library/ruby-modules/store-inventory-using-modules/stock-counts
for incrementing the stock_counts the second method syntax would be used
Andrei Burichita
9,989 Pointsthe only difference is that small "=" which is accepted when defining a function. in this case the first function name is get_name and the second function name is get_name= That is all, no errors should be present ..
Derek Lin
1,563 Pointswait = (attribute) should only be used when you're writing a writer or assigner method that assigns the value of some instance method. or maybe it works with class methods too? not sure about that. but yeah. you just wrote a setter and getter methods. so it shouldn't be get_name=(name), it should be I think name=(name), also get_name(the getter) should not take in any arguments.
Andrei Burichita
9,989 Pointsyes but in this case the name of a function can take the "=" sign or the "?" this is allowed in ruby as it is only a name... compile the code and see that there are no error messages