Bug #11115: Assigning a non-existent local variable to itself sets it to nil; unintuitive behaviour?

• Status: Rejected
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -
• ruby -v: 2.2.2
• Backport: 2.0.0: UNKNOWN, 2.1: UNKNOWN, 2.2: UNKNOWN

[GeorgeMillo (George Millo)]

Here's what normally happens when I try to reference a local variable that doesn't exist:

def foo
  bar
end

foo
# => NameError: undefined local variable or method `bar'

But if I assign bar to "itself", it doesn't raise an error

def foo
  bar = bar
  bar
end

foo
# => no results

Looks like bar in the second example is being set to nil. This doesn't feel very intuitive to me; shouldn't this raise an error? I mean, if you try to assign the non-existent variable 'bar' to anything else, that's how it works:

def foo
  fizz = bar
end

foo
# => NameError: undefined local variable or method `bar'

Is this a bug, or a feature?

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Description updated (diff)
• Status changed from Open to Rejected

George Millo wrote:

Is this a bug, or a feature?

A feature.