Question

I am still learning Ruby, and still copy pasting from my manual. But I run on a problem, that I dont know how to explain and what am I doing wrong. So here it is:
I want to create a new object with this:

second_page = Page.new ( :name=>"Second page", :position=>1, :permalink => "second" )

and I got a error:

Loading development environment (Rails 3.0.10)
ruby-1.9.2-p290 :001 > second_page = Page.new ( :name=>"Second page", :position=>1, :permalink => "second" )
SyntaxError: (irb):1: syntax error, unexpected tASSOC, expecting ')'
...econd_page = Page.new ( :name=>"Second page", :position=>1, ...
...                               ^
(irb):1: syntax error, unexpected ',', expecting $end
...age.new ( :name=>"Second page", :position=>1, :permalink => ...
...                               ^
        from /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/railties-3.0.10/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:44:in `start'
        from /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/railties-3.0.10/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:8:in `start'
        from /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/railties-3.0.10/lib/rails/commands.rb:23:in `<top (required)>'
        from script/rails:6:in `require'
        from script/rails:6:in `<main>'

but, if I do this:

ruby-1.9.2-p290 :002 > second_page = Page.new  :name=>"Second page", :position=>1, :permalink => "second"
 => #<Page id: nil, subject_id: nil, name: "Second page", permalink: "second", position: 1, visible: false, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>

that seems to work.
I got example from manual, and I am wondering what is going on?
And without () I dont know how can I do stuff with that object?
Thank you

Answer 1

Ruby doesn’t allow you to put spaces before round brackets if you choose to place them. This should work:

second_page = Page.new( :name=>"Second page", :position=>1, :permalink => "second" )