well, it's more of me just practicing the use of lambda expressions

The only place that I heard about ruby was in RPG Maker XP

how is it used there?  Just curious.

makes sense -- it's a simple language to learn, but extremely hard to master

I wouldn't be surprised it was hard for them to learn -- it's not a good language to start out with, it took me months to finally declare myself a Ruby Knight, since it's so different from things like C++, Java, BASIC, and the like -- but once you get your foot in the door, the Principle of Least Astonishment (Meaning that if you know the language well, you can decipher and write straightforward code with little trouble) kicks in.

I'm even less surprised they have Japanese characters in a Ruby scripting system -- if it came out before 1999, then it was during the era when 95% of Ruby coding took place in Japan

Though, it's cool to see that XP and VX used it

very true.  That's why it's called a 'Maker' though then again, some like Game Maker have somewhat-decent coding abilities.

also, good question from cemetech:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here (since I don't use Ruby), but couldn't you do exactly the same thing with regular (non-lambda) functions? Or are lambda functions somehow different than regular functions in Ruby? I thought one of the points of lambda functions was the ability to pass a (lambda) function to a second function as an argument, wherein the second function calls the lambda function inside of it. I don't see any of that going on in your code, which would make using lambda functions pointless.

response:

I did it purely for practice of point since they can be easily misused, I'm practicing to make sure I have them down right.

Yeah, it's a bit more complex, but they're more useful for higher-level math concepts, and even better for managing code snippets.

EDIT: I only answered part of your question methinks  so I'll go over how lambda functions can be invaluable:

let's say you have this working piece of code:

Code: [Select]

def Exponent(number,root)
   return number**root.to_f;end
if you want to load a variable such as 'Peanut' with an expression like "2 ** 5" you would constantly have to do:

Code: [Select]

Peanut = Exponent(2,5)
which is actually no problem.  But calling to lambdas is a better Ruby approach.  the exact same working code:

Code: [Select]

Peanut = lambda{|number,root| number**root}

Peanut.call(2,5)
you see, with this method, Peanut is directly attached to the function -- lambda functions are considered actual values, not functions themselves.  This allows for a higher level of abstraction in code, and nesting lambdas can be extremely useful when solving for complex equations -- it's easier to read and keep track of.  Such as in my Quadratic solver (which looks difficult but really is just a simple example of what I'm talking about) -- the lambda function isn't really a function -- it's a value that is determined by calling 'arguments' (I use that loosely, I forgot the true word for it)

This is one way to achieve 'anonymous functions' in Ruby, but actually isn't the most powerful way.  Another way that provides even less hassle is by declaring a Proc Function:

Code: [Select]

def ProcExample(input, NUMBAR)
  return lambda {|input| input.chomp.flatten.reverse},
                            lambda {||NUMBAR.to_s.reverse};end

uno, dos = ProcExample
The only real difference between a normal lambda statement and a proc statement is actually usage -- lambdas are when you simply just bind a function to a value.  Procs are when you use them on the fly to return a value based on 'arguments' (again, loosely used) like lambdas, but the difference is that they are usually more block-like and aren't directly bound to an actual variable -- very often seen as arguments of other lambdas or procs or even normal functions, or as returned values (with a lambda, you would return the value by using a call statement, procs would simply be declared at the moment).

I hope that clears a few things up

Cool, hopefully this is useful to some people here.

Oh, tryruby.org is FAULTY. I tried every single example EXACTLY the same way it was shown in the tutorials, and EVERY TIME I got this:

SyntaxError: <main>:69: syntax error, unexpected $undefined

It showed to enter 4 * 10, and I did. EVERY EXAMPLE shown threw that error when I tried using them in the tryruby built in prompt.

Oh and slightly off topic: EnvisionDev now includes Ruby support.

I'll try it in a real Ruby interpreter.