Hi! Loving the Ruby course so far but I had a quick question regarding the Amusement Park lesson.
In the Introduction to the exercise, the author states that methods which get values (i.e. query methods) should end with a question mark - see the suitcase example.
However, in the attendee.rb file, neither the height nor the pass_id getters follow this convention. I’m new to Ruby so unsure of the answer, but I hope it’s ok to ask here.
Based on my quite old Ruby knowledge, I think the advice that the exercise gives is wrong
Query methods should be named with a trailing
?
(Source: ruby/exercises/concept/amusement-park/.docs/introduction.md at main · exercism/ruby · GitHub)
Methods that end with a ? are methods that return a boolean value, not just any query methods.
So to answer the question from the title:
Should the Attendee query methods end in a question mark?
No, they shouldn’t, but the introduction should be slightly rephrased to fix the advice it gives about methods ending with ?.
the author states that methods which get values (i.e. query methods) should end with a question mark
I did not see that same statement. I did see the statement that query methods should get a question mark (as a comment in code).
All methods return values in Ruby, so the statement would be overreaching in its effect. A query method in Ruby is a method that returns a boolean value, and often used in conjunction with a logic statement. In this case it SHOULD but is not required, and that question mark is a communication device, nothing special to the language.
As long as the definition of “query method” is defined as “a method that returns a truthy/falsey response to be used in conditional or logical statements” then it is true that it should be communicated by being named with a question mark.
The way that the method names are written at the moment, it is hard to see that indication that it should be used as a query (the pass id method) and one may think that perhaps the height method could be.
For complete context, Should the Attendee query methods end in a question mark? · Issue #1609 · exercism/ruby · GitHub is the issue that was opened.
Ah I see the distinction! So getters which return a truthy/falsey response should end with a question mark, but getters which return other types should not. Thanks a lot @kotp!