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Ruby

Posted by Andrew Stelmach
Andrew Stelmach
12,583 Points

Quick Loops question

In the Ruby Loops tutorial:

name = ""

loop do 
    print "Enter your name: "
    name = gets.chomp
    if name == "Andy"
        puts "Hi #{name}, we've been expecting you..."
        break
    end
end

Why does he bother creating the name variable before the loop? The code seems to work just fine without it?

1 Answer

Gloria Dwomoh
Gloria Dwomoh
13,116 Points

Hi Andrew, I believe it has to do with scope. It works this way because you have only one loop, but if you want to access "name" from another block outside of the loop, without it being previously defined outside of the loop you might not be able to access it because its scope would be limited in that loop. You can read more on that here Variable Scope and Loops .

Andrew Stelmach
Andrew Stelmach
12,583 Points

So it's simply a 'best practice thing', but not necessary in this example.

Gloria Dwomoh
Gloria Dwomoh
13,116 Points

Exactly :)