In Ruby, what are the vertical lines?

Question

1.upto(9) { |x| print x }

Why won\'t this work?

{ print x |x} }

What about y?

Answer 1

In the piece of code you have specified, vertical lines are a part of the block definition syntax. So { |x| print x } is a block of code provided as a parameter to the upto method, 9 is also a parameter passed to the upto method.

Block of code is represented by a lambda or an object of class Proc in Ruby. lambda in this case is an anonymous function.

So just to draw an analogy to the function definition syntax,

def function_name(foo, bar, baz)
  # Do something
end


{       # def function_name (Does not need a name, since its anonymous)
|x|     #   (foo, bar, baz)
print x #   # Do Something
}       # end

Answer 2

It's for the parameters that are being passed to your block. i.e. in your example, upto will call your block with each number from 1 to 9 and the current value is available as x.

The block parameters can have any name, just like method parameters. e.g. 1.upto(9) { |num| puts num } is valid.

Just like parameters to a method you can also have multiple parameters to a block. e.g.

hash.each_pair { |key, value| puts "#{key} is #{value}" }

Answer 3

It's not an operator; it's delimiting the argument list for the block. The bars are equivalent to the parens in def foo(x). You can't write it as {print x |x} for the same reason this:

def foo(x)
  puts "It's #{x}"
end

can't be rewritten as this:

def foo
  puts "It's #{x}" (x
end

Answer 4

The vertical lines are use to denote parameters to the block. The block is the code enclosed within { }. This is really the syntax of the ruby block, parameters to the block and then the code.