Question

Possible Duplicate:
naked asterisk as parameter in method definition: def f(*)
Accessing a value in a method using *

The save(*) method in Rails takes just a single asterisk as an argument.

I know that * can be used for variable length arguments as in *args, but what does the * mean in this context? How does one access the arguments here?

And more specifically, how would one pass all the arguments on to a super call?

Answer 1

In this specific case, save doesn’t take any arguments. That’s what happens with a naked splat. But, as you may be aware, calling save on an ActiveRecord model accepts options because this method gets overridden by ActiveRecord::Validations here:

https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/v3.1.3/activerecord/lib/active_record/validations.rb#L47

# The validation process on save can be skipped by passing <tt>:validate => false</tt>. The regular Base#save method is
# replaced with this when the validations module is mixed in, which it is by default.
def save(options={})
  perform_validations(options) ? super : false
end