Implicit Return Value of Method Invocations and Blocks

Methods in Ruby implicitly returns their last line unless it’s preceeded by an explicit return.

def random_method(str)
  str = 'new value'
end

new_str = random_method('first value')
puts '---------'
puts new_str

On the example above, str = 'new value' is implicitly returned.

This method would actually anger Rubocop because we are assigning a string to a variable which will be returned anyway. We could (and should) directly return the string.

2:3: W: Lint/UselessAssignment: Useless assignment to variable - str. (https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide#underscore-unused-vars)
  str = 'new value'
  ^^^

The implicit return value is important because if not well understood it can be the cause of a lot of problems down the road. Let’s say for example we want to output our new value:

def random_method(str)
  str = 'new value'
  puts str
end

new_str = random_method('first value')
puts '---------'
puts new_str

One would think the code above outputs new_value two times. But it doesn’t because the method random_method’s last line is puts str. The method #puts always returns nil, which is what random_ method returns as well.

It is possible to explicitly return a value using the return keyword.

def random_method(str)
  return 'new value'
  str = 'newiest value'
end

new_str = random_method('first value')
puts '---------'
puts new_str

Here, 'new value' is returned and the code after is not executed. It’s aid to b unreachable.

This is most well illustrated by the `#select` method:

(1..10).to_a.select do |num|
  num.odd?
end
# => [1, 3, 5, 7, 9]

(1..10).to_a.select do |num|
  puts num.odd?
end
# => []

Blocks also implicitely return the last statement (and the only one here). #select check the return result of each block and add it to a new array if the result evaluates to true. For the second range, the #puts method always return nil which evaluates to false, which is why the new array is empty.