CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby
Luke
Luke

Reputation: 5708

How can gets() be a member of the String class?

It was my understanding that there weren't any functions per se, but that everything was a method and that anything whose class you don't have to name explicitly is really a method of the Kernel.

I thought methods are objects because that method gets has a method chomp as in myStr = gets.chomp. Ruby-doc.org tells that chomp is a String method. In fact, gets.class tells that gets is a String object. What is going on here? How can a method be a String object? From what mechanism does this behavior result, and where can I learn more about it?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 40

Answers (2)

sawa
sawa

Reputation: 168101

You are confusing the environment/receiver of a method call and the return value of a method call. In general, they are not the same. gets is primarily defined on Kernel, and its return value is a String instance. chomp is defined on String and its return value is a String. gets being defined on IO is just a secondary thing for convenience.

Upvotes: 2

Paweł Dawczak
Paweł Dawczak

Reputation: 9639

Actually, gets is a method call, and returned value is of type String. The string has method chomp, so you could nicely chain them as you mentioned:

myStr = gets.chomp

This is the same like:

myStr = gets().chomp()

UPDATE

If you want to obtain a method as an object, try:

chomp = "Hello".method(:chomp)
=> #<Method: String#chomp>
chomp.call # this is how you can "call" the method

Check the documentation for more!

Hope that helps!

Upvotes: 2

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