When Do You Use Parentheses in Ruby?

In this post we consider whether parentheses need to be used in Ruby and, if so, where? Is there a consistent rule? Read on for insight from a newcomer to the language.

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So I am still reasonably new to Ruby and I have only been working on it at home and therefore have had no one review my code and comment on whether I am writing my code in the correct way. The only input I have is from code that I see online and the book I bought about Rails. Now, most things are pretty straight forward and being as I work as a developer I have a basis on what is readable and what is not which leaves most of my code looking good (in my opinion) but the one problem I have are parentheses. I have no clue when I can omit them and when they should be used and even looking through my book I couldn’t find consistency.

After searching the web it seems the area is a little blurry but pretty much comes down to if parentheses make it easier to read your code, then add them in, otherwise omit them. I tried to find some concrete answers that take this a bit further but every place I looked, everyone, seemed to have different preferences.

Below I will put down some guidelines that I think makes sense from various other sources which I personally am trying to follow, but these are by no means commandments that must be obeyed.

Calling Methods Without Any Parameters:

def new

# without -> good

user = User.new

# with -> bad

user = User.new()

end


The general consensus is that these brackets are not needed and makes it look nice and tidy without the extra clutter. The downside to this is that one could confuse the method to be an attribute of the object that is being used, but hopefully our methods are named well enough to remove this confusion. As a Java developer, I was happy to take this up and write a few fewer brackets (which I’m not allowed to do in Java).

Calling Methods With Parameters:


def with_parameters

# without -> subjective

variable = object.method other_variable

# with -> good

variable = object.method(parameter)

# without -> bad

variable = object.method parameter, other_parameter

# with -> good

variable = object.method(parameter, other_parameter)

end


This is one guideline that I must admit I follow pretty loosely at the moment. The parentheses make it clear what is being passed into the method, therefore, increasing readability. Although for lines where a single method is being called, which is taking in a variable as input, I believe it still looks pretty clear without them. These are the sort of blurry areas that I mentioned earlier.

Defining Methods:

# without -> good

def method

# stuff

end



# with -> bad

def method()

# stuff

end



# without -> bad

def method parameter

# stuff

end



# with -> good

def method(parameter)

# stuff

end



# with -> good

def method(parameter, another_parameter)

# stuff

end


This takes a combination of the examples above where if there no parameters the definition should not have any parentheses, but if there are any inputs then parentheses should be included.

Methods That Are Part of a DSL (Such as Rails) or Ruby Keywords:


# with -> bad

validates (:name, presence: true, length: { maximum: 50 })

# without -> good

validates :name, presence: true, length: { maximum: 50 }



# with -> bad

attr_reader (:name, :email)

# without -> good

attr_reader :name, :email

This is one that from the information I have gathered that varies the most as there seems to be an equal amount of people that agree and disagree with this possible guideline. Personally, within my code, I tend to leave out brackets in these situations, although that could change sometime in the future as there seems to be such a varying opinion on this.

So that’s my take on using parentheses in Ruby. Honestly, even after writing this post I am still a bit unsure about what is the standard as everyone seems to have slightly different preferences, which are all technically valid due to the flexibility of the language around parentheses. Therefore if you are still a little confused like me, the main things you need to remember are, to make your code as readable as possible so anyone can follow your code and be consistent in what you choose to do, if you decide that you are going to add parentheses in certain situations make sure that you stand by that choice throughout your code.

Published at DZone with permission of Dan Newton, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

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