Ruby | Methods (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 06 May, 2022

Method is a collection of statements that perform some specific task and return the result. Methods are time savers and help the user to reuse the code without retyping the code. Defining & Calling the method: In Ruby, the method defines with the help of def keyword followed by method_name and end with end keyword. A method must be defined before calling and the name of the method should be in lowercase. Methods are simply called by its name. You can simply write the name of method whenever you call a method.

Syntax:

def method_name

Statement 1

Statement 2

. . end

Example:

Ruby `

Ruby program to illustrate the defining

and calling of method

#!/usr/bin/ruby

Here geeks is the method name

def geeks

statements to be displayed

puts "Welcome to GFG portal"

keyword to end method

end

calling of the method

geeks

`

Output:

Welcome to GFG portal

Passing parameters to methods: In Ruby, parameter passing is similar to other programming language's parameter passing i.e simply write the parameters in the brackets ().

Syntax:

def method_name(var1, var2, var3)

Statement 1

Statement 2

. . end

Example:

Ruby `

Ruby program to illustrate the parameter

passing to methods

#!/usr/bin/ruby

geeks is the method name

var1 and var2 are the parameters

def geeks (var1 = "GFG", var2 = "G4G")

 #  statements to be executed
 puts "First parameter is #{var1}"
 puts "First parameter is #{var2}"

end

calling method with parameters

geeks "GeeksforGeeks", "Sudo"

puts ""

puts "Without Parameters" puts ""

calling method without passing parameters

geeks

`

Output:

First parameter is GeeksforGeeks First parameter is Sudo

Without Parameters

First parameter is GFG First parameter is G4G

Variable Number of Parameters: Ruby allows the programmer to define a method that can take the variable number of arguments. It is useful when the user doesn't know the number of parameters to be passed while defining the method.

Syntax:

def method_name(*variable_name)

Statement 1

Statement 2

. . end

Example:

Ruby `

Ruby program to illustrate the method

that takes variables number of arguments

#!/usr/bin/ruby

defining method geeks that can

take any number of arguments

def geeks (*var)

to display the total number of parameters

puts "Number of parameters is: #{var.length}"

using for loop

for i in 0...var.length puts "Parameters are: #{var[i]}" end end

calling method by passing

variable number of arguments

geeks "GFG", "G4G" geeks "GeeksforGeeks"

`

Output:

Number of parameters is: 2 Parameters are: GFG Parameters are: G4G Number of parameters is: 1 Parameters are: GeeksforGeeks

Return statement in Methods: Return statement used to returns one or more values. By default, a method always returns the last statement that was evaluated in the body of the method. 'return' keyword is used to return the statements.

Example:

Ruby `

Ruby program to illustrate method return statement

#!/usr/bin/ruby

geeks is the method name

def num

variables of method

a = 10 b = 39

sum = a + b

return the value of the sum

return sum

end

calling of num method

puts "The result is: #{num}"

`

Output:

The result is: 49