Question

In PHP, you can make two variables point to the same data.

$a = 'foo'; $b = 'bar'; $a =& $b; echo $a // Outputs: bar echo $b // Outputs: bar 

What we are trying to do in Ruby is set @app_session to be equal to session[@current_app[:uid]]. So we only have to deal with @app_session in our app, and everything is automatically saved to the session.

Is there a way to do this in Ruby? After 15 minutes of reading, googling, and asking around here at the office, we’re still lost… lol

Answer 1

All variables in Ruby are references to an object.

a = b 

means that a and b point to the same object. That’s why when you want to copy a given object, you need to write

a = b.dup 

Writing

@app_session = session[@current_app[:uid]] 

points to the same object so you should be fine.

EDIT: you can verify this this way:

irb(main):001:0> a = 1 => 1 irb(main):002:0> b = a => 1 irb(main):004:0> p a.object_id 3 => nil irb(main):005:0> p b.object_id 3