Question

Is it possible to send nothing to an object?

Let me elaborate. For instance I could have something like this:

val = some_stack.include?(some_val) ? some_val : nil

obj1.obj2.send(val).obj3.obj4

The above call wont’t work because nil is not a symbol. So the solution is:

if val.nil?
  obj1.obj2.obj3.obj4
else
  obj1.obj2.send(val).obj3.obj4
end

However I’m not too fond of this. Is there any other way?

Answer 1

I’m not aware of any method that returns self without taking any arguments (but I might be overlooking something), but there’s no reason you couldn’t monkeypatch one into the class you’re using:

irb(main)> class Object
irb(main)>   def ignore
irb(main)>     self
irb(main)>   end
irb(main)> end
=> nil
irb(main)> msg = nil
=> nil
irb(main)> 'hi'.send(msg || :ignore).upcase
=> "HI"
irb(main)> msg = :reverse
=> :reverse
irb(main)> 'hi'.send(msg || :ignore).upcase
=> "IH"