Line Breaks: A Ruby Style Guide

Thursday 14 January 2016 at 08:00 GMT

I don't mean "style guide" as in a full guidebook, but rather a guide to styling Ruby with regard to two very specific circumstances: when to use parentheses on function and method invocation, and whether to use braces or do … end for blocks.

This is my personal recommendation and the style I try to follow. I couldn't really care less what you use as long as you're consistent inside a single project.

Blocks

When passing a block to a method that returns a new value, with no side effects, use braces. This allows for easy chaining.

(1..10)
  .collect { |n| n + 10 }
  .select(&:even?)
#=> [12, 14, 16, 18, 20]

However, if the method does have side effects, use do and end. This makes it very clear that something is happening, and makes chaining very ugly.

(0...10)
  .collect { |n| (n + 'a'.ord).chr }
  .each do |letter|
    puts letter
  end

When possible, avoid entirely methods that look like the former but are actually the latter.

numbers = (1..10).to_a
numbers.collect! { |n| n + 10 } # AVOID!

If they must be used, prefer the form with braces, as the ! character makes it quite clear that the operation is destructive anyway, and these methods are often more useful when chained.

Calling Functions

When calling functions or methods that take input and return output, with no side effects, use parentheses.

(1..1000).take(5)
#=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

When calling a method on an object that takes no arguments and returns information on the object state, do not use parentheses, as this should look like property access:

numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
numbers.length #=> 5

When calling a method that has side effects, avoid parentheses. This shows that the method makes a change to the outside world, and also prevents us from using multiple methods with effects on a single line.

puts numbers

describe 'number' do
  it 'can be added to another number' do
    expect(5 + 2).to eq(7)
  end
end

In the RSpec example above, describe and it have side effects. expect and eq do not, but to does.

When calling a method that takes a block, avoid parentheses.

numbers.collect { |n| n * 2 }
#=> [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]

Bonus: Declaring Functions

Always use parentheses.

def dance(count = 3)
  count.times do
    puts <<-EOS
      ALL THE SINGLE LADIES
            (•_•)
            <) )╯
            / \\
      ALL THE SINGLE LADIES
            (•_•)
            \\( (>
              / \\
    EOS
  end
end