The map method’s shorthand syntax

One of the most common uses of map in Ruby is to take an object and call some method on the object, like this.

[1, 2, 3].map { |number| number.to_s }

To save us from redundancy, Ruby has a shorthand version which is functionally equivalent to the above.

[1, 2, 3].map(&:to_s)

The shorthand version is nice but its syntax is a little mysterious. In this post I’ll explain why the syntax is what it is.

Passing symbols as blocks

Let’s leave the world of map for a moment and deal with a “regular” method.

I’m going to show you a method which takes a block and then demonstrate four different ways of passing a block to that method.

Side note: if you’re not too familiar with Proc objects yet, I would suggest reading my other posts on how Proc objects work and what the & in front of &block means before continuing.

First way: using a normal block

You’ve of course seen this way before. We call my_method and pass a regular block to it.

def my_method(&block)
  block.call("hello")
end

puts my_method { |value| value.upcase } # outputs "HELLO"

Second way: using Proc.new

If we wanted to, we could instead pass our block using Proc.new. Since my_method takes a block and not a Proc object, we would have to prefix Proc.new with an ampersand to convert the Proc object into a block.

(If you didn’t know, prefixing an expression with & will convert a proc to a block and a block to a proc. See this post for more details on how that works.)

def my_method(&block)
  block.call("hello")
end

puts my_method(&Proc.new { |value| value.upcase })

There would never really be a practical reason to express the syntax this way, but I wanted to show that it’s possible. This “second way” example will also connect the first way and the third way.

Third way: using to_proc

All symbols respond to a method called to_proc which returns a Proc object. If we do :upcase.to_proc, it gives us a Proc object that’s equivalent to what we would have gotten by doing Proc.new { |value| value.upcase }.

def my_method(&block)
  block.call("hello")
end

puts my_method(&:upcase.to_proc)

Fourth way: passing a symbol

I’ll show one final way. When Ruby sees an argument that’s prefixed with an ampersand, it attempts to call to_proc on the argument. So our to_proc on &:upcase.to_proc is actually superfluous. We can just pass &:upcase all by itself.

def my_method(&block)
  block.call("hello")
end

puts my_method(&:upcase)

What ultimately gets passed is the Proc object that results from calling :upcase.to_proc. Actually, more precisely, what gets passed is the block that results from calling &:upcase.to_proc, since the & converts the Proc object to a block.

Passing symbols to map

With the understanding of the above, you now know that this:

[1, 2, 3].map(&:to_s)

Is equivalent to this:

[1, 2, 3].map(&:to_s.to_proc)

Which is equivalent to this:

[1, 2, 3].map(&Proc.new { |number| number.to_s })

Which, finally, is equivalent to this:

[1, 2, 3].map { |number| number.to_s }

So, contrary to the way it may seem, there aren’t two different “versions” of the map method. The shorthand syntax is owing to the way that Ruby passes Proc objects.

Takeaways

• When an argument is prefixed with &, Ruby attempts to call to_proc on it.
• All symbols respond to the to_proc method.
• There aren’t two different versions of the map method. The shorthand syntax is possible due to the two points above.