Do you leave parentheses in or out in Ruby? [close

Question

When possible.. do you leave parentheses in or out in Ruby?

Answer 1

I leave them out when I'm doing DSL-ish stuff, like t.column or has_many in rails. The rest of the time, it generally comes down to clarity, and it's probably an even split.

Answer 2

I tend to leave them out when doing assertions such as assert_equal. Maybe it's to make it domain specific language-like.

Answer 3

I use parens as comments to help the future me... who is likely to have fewer brain cells than the current me :-)

Nothing worse than looking at some code you wrote 2 years ago and misunderstanding it, so that you break something while modifying it.

If parens will save the future me a few minutes (or hours) in the future, I'll put in as many as needed to make the statement crystal clear.

-- John

Answer 4

I try to leave them out, if at all possible. I think it makes code easier to read (generally speaking).

Answer 5

If you mean in function calls, I always put parenthesis because it's always easier to read. If you mean in conditions (if, while) I only put parenthesis when they're necessary.

Answer 6

I guess I do both, but I definitely keep them in if it adds to readability and avoids statements that look ambiguous.