Variable Shadowing

Variables shadowing is what happen when two local variables share the same name.

The variable in the inner scope shadows the variable with the same name in the outer scope, making the latter inaccessible in the inner scope, although it should be (see Local Variable Scope).

var = 'moon'

10.times do |var|
  puts "To the #{var}!"
end

In the example above, we cannot print "To the moon!" because the variable lazily named var in the inner scope (the do..end block) is shadowing the variable in the outer scope. In other word we cannot access the outer var because we have an inner variable with the same name.

Running Rubocop on this code can hint us on a possible bug:

3:14: W: Lint/ShadowingOuterLocalVariable: Shadowing outer local variable - var.
10.times do |var|
             ^^^