ruby - Dynamic constant assignment

Question

class MyClass
  def mymethod
    MYCONSTANT = "blah"
  end
end

gives me the error:

SyntaxError: dynamic constant assignment error

Why is this considered a dynamic constant? I'm just assigning a string to it.

Answer 1

Your problem is that each time you run the method you are assigning a new value to the constant. This is not allowed, as it makes the constant non-constant; even though the contents of the string are the same (for the moment, anyhow), the actual string object itself is different each time the method is called. For example:

def foo
  p "bar".object_id
end

foo #=> 15779172
foo #=> 15779112

Perhaps if you explained your use case—why you want to change the value of a constant in a method—we could help you with a better implementation.

Perhaps you'd rather have an instance variable on the class?

class MyClass
  class << self
    attr_accessor :my_constant
  end
  def my_method
    self.class.my_constant = "blah"
  end
end

p MyClass.my_constant #=> nil
MyClass.new.my_method

p MyClass.my_constant #=> "blah"

If you really want to change the value of a constant in a method, and your constant is a String or an Array, you can 'cheat' and use the #replace method to cause the object to take on a new value without actually changing the object:

class MyClass
  BAR = "blah"

  def cheat(new_bar)
    BAR.replace new_bar
  end
end

p MyClass::BAR           #=> "blah"
MyClass.new.cheat "whee"
p MyClass::BAR           #=> "whee"