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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T15:25:20+00:00

I’ve seen it used many times, and never really stopped to question it. Now

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I’ve seen it used many times, and never really stopped to question it. Now it’s got me wondering if there is a difference between stub and stub!

Is there? Or is it historical? Does stub! mean it stubs it once? and returns back to the normal method call?

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  1. Editorial Team

    In both version 2, and v1.3.2, they are simply aliases of each other. In v1.3.2 stub is an alias of stub!

    https://github.com/dchelimsky/rspec/blob/v1.3.2/lib/spec/mocks/methods.rb#L12

    While in v2.6 of rspec 2, stub! is an alias of stub

    https://github.com/rspec/rspec-mocks/blob/master/lib/rspec/mocks/methods.rb#L12

    However in v1.1.4, stub is an alias for mock, and stub! is a separate method. From the docs, it would seem that stub! in this early version was used to add methods to existing objects, creating a “partial mock”.

    The explanation:
    https://github.com/dchelimsky/rspec/blob/1.1.4/lib/spec/mocks.rb#L43

    The definitions:
    https://github.com/dchelimsky/rspec/blob/1.1.4/lib/spec/mocks/spec_methods.rb#L27
    https://github.com/dchelimsky/rspec/blob/1.1.4/lib/spec/mocks/methods.rb#L12

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