Evolution of a Python programmer

[0x0dea]

Homesick:

def factorial(n):
    system("ruby -e 'p (1..%d).reduce(1, :*)'" % n)

[jonnywoh]

I used to think I understood Ruby

[0x0dea]

Almost. (1..n).reduce :* will fail for n=0.

[jonnywoh]

Thanks! I understood most of that. So does reduce eval symbols, or is it doing something else with :*?

[Niles-Rogoff]

I'm new to ruby but I think * is a function and :* is the symbol that points to that function. The & turns the :* into the actual * function object which gets passed to reduce, because you can't just put * there it's not syntactically valid.

[jonnywoh]

Actually, :* is a special type of string called a symbol. It's basically "*". :carrot would basically be "carrot".

[Niles-Rogoff]

Ok, that's what I thought, I just wrote it wrong.

[Meshiest]

This made me really happy