Question

I have a method that receives about 20 arguments, in that argument I would like to pass all those to another method. Can I pass them all into the second method without retyping them all? Is there an args array or something that I can pass?

What I have:

def my_method(arg1, arg2, ..., arg20)
  #do some stuff
  my_second_method(arg1, arg2, ..., arg20)
  #do other stuff
end

What I would like:

def my_method(arg1, arg2, ..., arg20)
  #do some stuff
  my_second_method(args[array])
  #do other stuff
end

Answer 1

Having a method that accepts that many arguments is a code smell. This method is almost surely trying to do too many things with too many different kinds of data.

That said, if this is unavoidable, try this approach, using Ruby’s splat operator.

  def one(*args)
    # process/validate args
    two(*args)     # Note that the splat is needed here too.
  end

  def two(*args)
    # do work
  end