Undefine variable in Ruby

Question

Let\'s say I\'m using irb, and type a = 5. How do I remove the definition of a so that typing a returns a NameError

Answer 1

In the spirit of the question, you could limit the variable to a scope, assuming you are okay with other local variables being locked to the same scope. This is useful particularly if you are defining something in a class and don't want the local variable to stay around in the class declaration.

The only ways I can think to do this is with Integer#times or Array#each like so:

1.times do |a|
  a = 5
  # code…
end

[5].each do |a|
  # code…
end

There are probably other, even cleaner ways to limit to a block besides this. These aren't as clean as I'd like and I'd love to see if someone has a cleaner method to use to do this.