CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubysyntax
johannes
johannes

Reputation: 7272

What exactly is `&:capitalize` in Ruby?

I just read this answer Converting upper-case string into title-case using Ruby.

There is the following line of code

"abc".split(/(\W)/).map(&:capitalize).join

What exactly is &:capitalize? Before I had put this into irb myself, I would have told you, it's not valid ruby syntax. It must be some kind of Proc object, because Array#map normaly takes a block. But it isn't. If I put it into irb alone, I get syntax error, unexpected tAMPER.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 3687

Answers (3)

sepp2k
sepp2k

Reputation: 370415

foo(&a_proc_object) turns a_proc_object into a block and calls foo with that block.

foo(&not_a_proc_object) calls to_proc on not_a_proc_object and then turns the proc object returned by to_proc into a block and calls foo with that block.

In ruby 1.8.7+ and active support Symbol#to_proc is defined to return a proc which calls the method named by the symbol on the argument to the proc.

Upvotes: 6

Grandpa
Grandpa

Reputation: 3253

It's Symbol#to_proc: see http://pragdave.pragprog.com/pragdave/2005/11/symbolto_proc.html

map(&:capitalize) is exactly the same as map { |x| x.capitalize }.

Upvotes: 5

Jonathan Feinberg
Jonathan Feinberg

Reputation: 45364

The ampersand is syntactic sugar that does a whole bunch of code generation with the to_proc message. See http://blog.codahale.com/2006/08/01/stupid-ruby-tricks-stringto_proc/

Upvotes: 1

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