Question

What I want to do is name variables dynamically like:

def instance(instance)
    @instance = instance #@instance isn't actually a variable called @instance, rather a variable called @whatever was passed as an argument
end

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can’t really.

You could play around with eval, but really, it won’t be readable.

Use the correct if or use a hash instead.

# With Hash:
values = {}
a = :foo
values[a] = "bar"
values[:foo] # => "bar"

# With if
calc = "bar"
if a_is_foo
  foo = calc
else
  oof = calc
end
foo # => "bar"