Question

I am trying to write a Ruby recursive function, but I am getting this error continuously. My code goes something like this

def myfun(mylist)
   nextlist = []  

   if mylist.size == 1  
      return (mylist[0])
   else
      # populate the list "nextlist" with fewer elements as compared to mylist somehow
   end

   return myfun(nextlist)
end

The following error message comes up pointing at the last end statement:

syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting keyword_end

Where is the problem here?

Answer 1

According to the old “teach a man to fish” proverb, I’ll answer the more general question “how do I find a missing or superfluous end?”.

For this, I find it very helpful to use the auto-indenting feature of my editor. In vim, I just hit gg=G to indent the entire file, and scan through it visually to find where the indent starts being different from what I’d expect.