Question

I have been going through a crash course of Ruby and Ruby on Rails and i can’t figure this out:
In embedded ruby html files, there are several tags.
<% %> for execution
<%= %> for output, but what function do these tags serve: <%= -%>, what’s with the “-” sign at the end ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

This link contains a good overview of erb markup.

From the site:

RECOGNIZED TAGS

ERB recognizes certain tags in the provided template and converts
them based on the rules below:

<% Ruby code -- inline with output %>

<%= Ruby expression -- replace with result %>

<%# comment -- ignored -- useful in testing %>

% a line of Ruby code -- treated as <% line %> (optional -- see ERB.new)

%% replaced with % if first thing on a line and % processing is used

<%% or %%> -- replace with <% or %> respectively

All other text is passed through ERB filtering unchanged.