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rubystringspace

How String concatenation works in ruby?

How the following line of code concatenates a string in ruby?

2.1.0 :052 > value = "Kamesh" "Waran"
 => "KameshWaran"

I understand that '+' is a method on String class which concatenates the strings passed. How the space(' ') can be the operator/method?

Can anyone elaborate how the space(' ') concatenate strings?

Solution

  • The space is not an operator. This only works for string literals, and is just part of the literal syntax, like the double-quotes. If you have two string literals with nothing but whitespace between them, they get turned into a single string. It's a convention borrowed from later versions of C.

    irb(main):001:0> foobar = "foo" "bar"
=> "foobar"
irb(main):002:0> foo="foo"
=> "foo"
irb(main):003:0> bar="bar"
=> "bar"
irb(main):004:0> foo bar
NoMethodError: undefined method `foo' for main:Object
        from (irb):4
        from /usr/local/var/rbenv/versions/2.1.3/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'
irb(main):005:0>