How to distinguish blocks of certain arity in 1.8

ruby-talk
1

Hi all,

I'd like to distinguish the two following blocks by means of their
arity, but in Ruby 1.8 I don't see how to do this as Proc#arity
returns the same value.

lambda {}.arity => -1
lambda {|*a|}.arity => -1

This is not the case in 1.9 as the semantics of the first one has
changed, and now it's equivalent to lambda {||}. Both return 1 and
complain when the number of arguments passed is not correct.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

2

I respond to myself. I've done this, admittedly in a bit ugly way, by
using parse_tree.to_ruby and matching with |*.

3

unknown wrote:

Hi all,

I'd like to distinguish the two following blocks by means of their
arity, but in Ruby 1.8 I don't see how to do this as Proc#arity
returns the same value.

lambda {}.arity => -1
lambda {|*a|}.arity => -1

I suppose the answer is that they have the same arity. These are all
legal

lambda {}.call
lambda {}.call :hello
lambda {}.call :hello, :world

lambda { |*a| }.call
lambda { |*a| }.call :hello
lambda { |*a| }.call :hello, :world

From the caller's point of view, I see nothing which would distinguish
one from the other.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

4

The Higgs bozo wrote:

unknown wrote:

Hi all,

I'd like to distinguish the two following blocks by means of their
arity, but in Ruby 1.8 I don't see how to do this as Proc#arity
returns the same value.

lambda {}.arity => -1
lambda {|*a|}.arity => -1

I suppose the answer is that they have the same arity. These are all
legal

lambda {}.call
lambda {}.call :hello
lambda {}.call :hello, :world

lambda { |*a| }.call
lambda { |*a| }.call :hello
lambda { |*a| }.call :hello, :world

From the caller's point of view, I see nothing which would distinguish
one from the other.

According the ri documentation

renard$ ri Proc#arity
------------------------------------------------------------- Proc#arity
     prc.arity -> fixnum

···

------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Returns the number of arguments that would not be ignored. If the
     block is declared to take no arguments, returns 0. If the block is
     known to take exactly n arguments, returns n. If the block has
     optional arguments, return -n-1, where n is the number of
     mandatory arguments. A proc with no argument declarations is the
     same a block declaring || as its arguments.

        Proc.new {}.arity #=> 0
        Proc.new {||}.arity #=> 0
        Proc.new {|a|}.arity #=> 1
        Proc.new {|a,b|}.arity #=> 2
        Proc.new {|a,b,c|}.arity #=> 3
        Proc.new {|*a|}.arity #=> -1
        Proc.new {|a,*b|}.arity #=> -2

Note that Proc.new().arity should return a 0, however it returns -1
!!!!

renard$ irb --simple-prompt

Proc.new {}.arity

=> -1

I would consider that to be a bug

The ri documentation states that Proc.new {}.arity ande Proc.new{||} are
equivalent. Proc.new{||}.arity
does return a 0.

Proc.new {||}.arity

=> 0

lambda {}.arity has the same bug. Thus the OP should use lambda {||}
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

5

Hi,

At Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:31:41 +0900,
Bernard Kenik wrote in [ruby-talk:334852]:

Note that Proc.new().arity should return a 0, however it returns -1
!!!!

It was a miss in rdoc which has been fixed already.

···

--
Nobu Nakada