Difference between __callee__ and __method__

Question

In Ruby, one can use either

__callee__ 

or

__method__ 

to find the name of the currently executing method.<

Answer 1

To paraphrase the documentation, __callee__ is the name of the method that the caller called, whereas __method__ is the name of the method at definition. The following example illustrates the difference:

class Foo

  def foo
    puts __callee__
    puts __method__
  end

  alias_method :bar, :foo
end

If I call Foo.new.foo then the output is

foo
foo

but if I call Foo.new.bar then the output is

bar
foo

__method__ returns :foo in both cases because that is the name of the method as defined (i.e. the class has def foo), but in the second example the name of the method the caller is calling is bar and so __callee__ returns that.