Bug #15956: `{*nil}` causes confusing error message

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -
• ruby -v: ruby 2.7.0dev (2019-06-24T15:19:49Z trunk e09afd15b7) [x86_64-linux]
• Backport: 2.4: UNKNOWN, 2.5: UNKNOWN, 2.6: UNKNOWN

[Tietew (Toru Iwase)]

$ ruby -e 'p({*nil})'
-e:1: syntax error, unexpected *, expecting '}'
p({*nil})
-e:1: Can't assign to nil
p({*nil})

First syntax error is intended.
But second error message Can't assign to nil is confusing.

This happens with nil, true, false and self.
Other identifiers including keywords don't.

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Is duplicate of Bug #15078: Hash splat of empty hash should not create a positional argument. added

[jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans)]

• Status changed from Open to Closed

Fixed by #14183:

$ ruby -e 'def foo(*args); p args; end; foo(**{}); foo(**Hash.new) '
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