Question

I am trying to write a small ruby script that will have two methods (TrySlot and LookAtCut). Each method needs to be able to call the other method. When ruby is parsing the first method, it fails because it doesn’t understand the name of the second method, since I haven’t defined it yet.

So, how do I tell ruby, there is a method called TrySlot that I will define later so I can call TrySlot in my definition for LookAtCut?

Answer 1

The reason you are getting problems is that Ruby usually assumes all names starting with an uppercase letter to be constants. However, it will also let you define methods with a name starting by an uppercase letter. What is happening is the following:

• Ruby sees def LookAtCut and correctly defines a method named LookAtCut
• Inside LookAtCut, Ruby sees TrySlot, assumes it is a constant, tries to find it and fails with an error, since it hasn’t been defined.

The solution would be not to use method names starting with uppercase characters. Then, you can use a method that hasn’t been defined yet inside another one:

def a
  b
end

def b
  puts "Hello!"
end

a #=> "Hello!"