Question

I know of two ways ruby allows static functions to call each other within the same class…

class MyClass

  def self.foo
    self.say "self"
  end

  def self.bar
    MyClass.say "class name"
  end

  def self.say(text)
    puts "Using #{text}"
  end

end

Are there any subtle differences between the two syntaxes? Maybe performance?

Answer 1

No, those are exactly the same. Performance-wise too. The only difference is code maintainability. If you decide to move a method with explicit class reference to another class, there’s more work for you (or less, depending on a situation)

def self.bar
  MyClass.say "class name"
end

Oh, and there are no static methods in ruby.

Also, you don’t need to explicitly use self to call a method there. self can be implicit.

class MyClass

  def self.foo
    say "self"
  end

  def self.say(text)
    puts "Using #{text}"
  end

end

MyClass.foo
# >> Using self