FAQ: Methods, Blocks, & Sorting - Parameters and Arguments

Frequently Asked Questions Ruby FAQ
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This community-built FAQ covers the “Parameters and Arguments” exercise from the lesson “Methods, Blocks, & Sorting”.

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This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

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FAQs on the exercise Parameters and Arguments

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2

If parentheses are optional, what happens if we pass in the return value of one function into another? Will Ruby figure it out based on the number of arguments? So if we had a function f(x, y, z) and a function g(a, b), would g f x y z b run correctly assuming the return value of f is a valid value for a?

3

Hello, @byteblitz.

I believe the lesson states that parenthesis are usually optional. There are times when they are needed to group things together. For example:

def f x, y, z # parenthesis not used here making readability more difficult, but the code still runs
  x + y * z 
end

def g a, b #same thing here
  a - b 
end

#The first 4 options work
puts g((f(1, 2, 3)), 5) #2
puts g (f(1, 2, 3)), 5 #2
puts g f(1, 2, 3), 5 #2
puts g (f 1, 2, 3), 5 #2
puts g f 1, 2, 3, 5 #error: wrong number of arguments (given 4, expected 3)

In the last line, Ruby can’t tell that only the first 3 arguments were for function f, and the last was the second argument for function g.

2 Likes
4

I kept getting

512
12

in the output. It should just be 512. After resetting the exercise, the 12 disappeared.