Defining and calling a method in irb

Question

I'm struggling with understanding understanding OOP. I am trying to use IRB to play around with Ruby and deepen my understanding.

In IRB

foo = Object.new

Creates a new object However if I try and give irb a definition and call it on that object it doesn't work. (does the def have to happen in a .rb file and loaded into Ruby?)

def bar "hello" end

Beartech Beartech · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-31T05:56:57

You need to define the method in the class you want it to apply to.

class NewObject
  def foo
    puts "hello"
  end
end

these methods are called like:

x = NewObject.new
x.foo

You can create methods that are not specific to a class just by defining them:

 def bar
   puts "bar!"
 end

and just call them as:

bar

Defining and calling a method in irb

2 Answers