Ruby Quick Syntax Reference

CHAPTER 2

Operators

Expressions

Unlike other programming languages, in Ruby there isn’t a distinction between statements and expressions: everything is evaluated as an expression that produces a return value. The simplest expressions are:

• literals: values such as numbers, strings, arrays, hashes, etc…
• variable and constant references: A variable (or a constant) is referenced by citing its name. For example:

  x = 1 # assignment expressionx # variable reference expressionMY_CONST # constant reference

• method invocations: the (return) value of a method invocation is the value of the last evaluated expression in the body of the method.

Operators