What Ruby Version?

[Lex Peters]

What version of Ruby does this book use?

When I write the following code.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/e3f55332903944509c1a4820b71d686b

class Number

    def initialize(n)
        @value = n
    end

    def to_s
        @value.to_s
    end

    def inspect
        "«#{self}»"
    end
end

class Add

    def initialize (left, right)
        @left = left
        @right = right
    end

    def to_s
        "#{@left} + #{@right}"
    end
    def inspect
        "«#{self}»"
    end
end

class Multiply
    def initialize (left, right)
        @left = left
        @right = right
    end

    def to_s
        "#{@left} * #{@right}"
    end
    def inspect
        "«#{self}»"
    end
end

puts Add.new(
    Multiply.new(Number.new(1), Number.new(2)),
    Multiply.new(Number.new(3), Number.new(4))
)

puts Number.new(5)

I receive these errors.

./uc0.ruby:34:in `initialize': wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 0) (ArgumentError)
    from ./uc0.ruby:34:in `new'
    from ./uc0.ruby:34:in `<main>'

[Murray Steele]

Hi Lex,

The code in the book should work with any version of ruby.  2.0 was the most current at the time the book was published, so any 2.x version should work.  There’s nothing in the snippet you’ve posted that looks like it wouldn’t work in any version of ruby though.

I think the problem you’re seeing is that the code in your email and the code in your gist snippet are different.  Your email has initialize methods in it for Number, Add, and Multiply, but the code in the gist doesn’t.  Without the custom initialize methods the Number, Add, and Multiply classes will fall back to the default initialize method defined on all objects.  This default initializer doesn’t take any arguments and that’s why you’re getting the “`initialize': wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 0)” error.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Murray

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[Francis Fish]

It *might* be that older versions of Ruby don't like spaces before the opening bracket on the definition of methods.

I pasted the code into a file and ran Ruby 2.2.4 and it ran fine.

Thanks and Regards,

Francis

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[Lex Peters]

Murray, the code on Gist is the one I am having problems with.  The one in my post was my solution from help on IRC. 

I would like to resolve the problems.  It is making it difficult to study.

Thanks, Lex

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[Tom Stuart]

Hi Lex,

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Lex Peters <sex...@gmail.com> wrote:

Murray, the code on Gist is the one I am having problems with.

The gist does not contain all of the necessary code from the book, which is why it doesn’t work.

The confusion is likely to be because the code in the book builds up incrementally, so any individual piece of code is unlikely to work in isolation. In this particular case there are method definitions on page 24 that look like your gist, but they depend on having already evaluated the class definitions on page 23 (“class Number < Struct.new(:value)” etc) which provide the correct constructors for the Number, Add and Multiply classes. The code on page 24 reopens these existing classes to add more methods, and the same pattern continues throughout the rest of the chapter to add #reducible?, #reduce, #evaluate etc.

I apologise for the problems this has caused you. If it helps, the final working version of each of these classes can be found at https://github.com/tomstuart/computationbook/tree/master/the_meaning_of_programs/syntax, and all the other code in the book can be found elsewhere in the same repository (organised by chapter), so I hope that will be useful if you have any similar problems later on.

If not, please do come back and ask more questions!

Cheers,

-Tom

[Lex Peters]

Tom, thanks for the help.  That is exactly where I was struggling.  I understand now and it is all working.

Thanks, Lex