Ruby double Colon Operators

10 June 2014

# Ruby dot “.” and double Colon “::” Operators: #

You call a module method by preceding its name with the module’s name and a period, and you reference a constant using the module name and two colons.

The :: is a unary operator that allows: constants, instance methods and class methods defined within a class or module, to be accessed from anywhere outside the class or module.

Remember: in Ruby, classes and methods may be considered constants too.

You need just to prefix the :: Const_name with an expression that returns the appropriate class or module object.

If no prefix expression is used, the main Object class is used by default.

Here are two examples:

MR_COUNT = 0        # constant defined on main Object class
module Foo
  MR_COUNT = 0
  ::MR_COUNT = 1    # set global count to 1
  MR_COUNT = 2      # set local count to 2
end
puts MR_COUNT       # this is the global constant
puts Foo::MR_COUNT  # this is the local "Foo" constant

Second Example:

CONST = ' out there'
class Inside_one
   CONST = proc {' in there'}
   def where_is_my_CONST
      ::CONST + ' inside one'
   end
end
class Inside_two
   CONST = ' inside two'
   def where_is_my_CONST
      CONST
   end
end
puts Inside_one.new.where_is_my_CONST
puts Inside_two.new.where_is_my_CONST
puts Object::CONST + Inside_two::CONST
puts Inside_two::CONST + CONST
puts Inside_one::CONST
puts Inside_one::CONST.call + Inside_two::CONST

# the following is the result
 out there inside one                                                                                                                                           
 inside two                                                                                                                                                     
 out there inside two                                                                                                                                           
 inside two out there                                                                                                                                           
#<Proc:0x000000011f17a0@/home/ubuntu/workspace/ruby/hello.rb:3>                                                                                                 
 in there inside two  

Ruby 14

Rails 7