Blocks in Ruby

Blocks are one way to achieve Closure in Ruby. We can think of block as an anonymous method that is passed around and executed. And just like method, blocks return a value.

In Ruby, method implicitly accepts blocks. The execution of the block is done through Yielding.

Arity

Passing less or more block argument than expected parameter does not produce an error.

The rules regarding this number of arguments that can be passed to a block (or a Proc or lambda) is called its arity. In Ruby, blocks have lenient arity rules. It means it won’t complain if the number of arguments is not the same as the number of parameters defined.

When to use Blocks in a Method

Defere the Implementation to Method Invocation

In some case, we are not sure how the method will be called. In those case, instead of implementing a method with perhaps a flag to control the flow, one can make use of a block. This is actually how most core library’s methods are implemented: Array#select lets you pass in any expression that evaluates to a boolean in the block parameter. This is much more convenient than having a select_* method for every case possible (one when the number is odds, one when the number is greater than, one when it’s prime etc.)

Sandwich Code 🥪

Useful to execute a code before and after anything. Sandwich code is often used with timing execution, logging, notification systems etc. It is also used in resource management and interfacing with operating system: allocate resources then perform clean-up to free up said resources.

def time_it
  time_before = Time.now
  yield
  time_after = Time.now

  puts "It took #{time_after - time_before} seconds."
end

time_it { sleep(3) }

time_it { "hello world" }

Ruby’s own File#open method can take a block. Doing so let the method open then close a file automatically for us!

File.open('file.txt', 'w+') do |file|
  # write something in the file
end

Here, Ruby automatically opens the file, do whatever we instruct it to do in the block and finally closes the file. This is better than having to call File#close!

Explicit Block Parameter

Ruby methods implicitly accept block. If there is no yielding done, the block is simply ignored. It is also possible to explicitly take a block.

An explicit block is treated as a named object: it gets assigned to a method parameter and can be managed like any other object.

An explicit block is named with a & following by the name.

def method(&explicit_block)
  puts "My &explicit_block is: #{explicit_block}"
end

method { sleep(2) }
# My &explicit_block is: #<Proc:0x000055d1e7dcf050 block.rb:5>
# => nil

The explicit_block local variable pointing to our explicit block is converted by Ruby to a simple Proc object. The details of what is a Proc is trifling as of yet but knowing it is a Proc is important for invoking it further down the road with Proc#call method (see below).

The point of an explicit block is to be able to use it like any other variable. That means we can pass the block around to another method, if need arises.

def method(&block)
  puts "Do something..."
  method2(block)         # Call `method2` passing in local variable `block`
  puts "Goodbye"
end

def method2(local_var)
  puts "In method2!"
  local_var.call("=> ")  # calls the block originally passed to `method`
  puts "Let's go back to method"
end

method do |prefix|
  puts prefix + "Wait 2 seconds and continue..."
  sleep(2)
end
# Do something...
# In method2!
# => Wait 2 seconds and continue...
# Let's go back to method
# Goodbye

A Proc is not called with yield like the implicit block we saw earlier. Instead, to call a Proc we use the aptly named call method. Another thing to keep in mind is that we can pass arguments to the explicit block by using them as arguments to call. The argument is used only if a parameter is defined in the block.