Elements of Ruby Style

mhartl · on Oct 18, 2008

This list is crap. He advocates the ridiculous

    x = if boolean then 3 else 5 end

in place of

    x = boolean ? 3 : 5

Then we have

  return if x = null

which assigns the value of "null" to x (if null exists). Maybe he meant

  return if x == nil

If so, this is better rendered as

  return if x.nil?

Finally,

  all_users.select(&:is_active).map(&:name).sort

isn't standard Ruby; it will (currently) only work in Rails.

Freaky · on Oct 18, 2008

all_users.select(&:is_active).map(&:name).sort

isn't standard Ruby; it will (currently) only work in Rails.

It's standard in 1.9, and making it work in 1.8 is all of 3 lines:

    class Symbol
      def to_proc() proc {|obj, *args| obj.__send__(self, *args) } end
    end

Or if you've got facets:

    require 'facets/symbol/to_proc'

mhartl · on Oct 21, 2008

It's standard in 1.9

That's why I said "(currently)". From the official Ruby homepage: The current stable version is 1.8.7.

making it work in 1.8 is all of 3 lines

I agree, but this still makes it not standard Ruby. The article should have mentioned this.

randrews · on Oct 18, 2008

It is so sad that this is still what people worry about for code style. Anything here could be done in an automatic code formatter written in a weekend.

Why not an article on, say, Ruby API design? Use blocks, overload these (but not these) operators, DSLs, etc?

You know, elements of style that matter?

thwarted · on Oct 19, 2008

Advocates readability in one instance, then says to use fewer spaces for indentation? The only reason to use indention less than 4 spaces (some would say even 4 is too few) is so you can cram more nested statements in, and if you're running out of room nesting such that a smaller indentation would help, your problem is not related to indentation.

qqq · on Oct 18, 2008

Why break lines at a fixed length yourself instead of letting your editor's wordwrap handle it?

mileszs · on Oct 18, 2008

The wrapped line (2nd line, if you will) is not indented. I find a word-wrapped line of code more difficult to read than a manually broken and indented line of code.