Use semi-colon to separate multiple statements in a block on a single line in ruby

Pontifications

1. only works with begin…end not {…} blocks

e.g. from multiple-statements-in-a-block.rb:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rubygems'

x = 1
begin puts "1" ; puts "2" end if x == 1
# note this doesn't work: { puts "1" ; puts "2" } if x == 1
# Why doesn't it work? probably because {} returns a value

output:

ruby multiple-statements-in-a-block.rb 
1
2

2. explanation from Interacting with Ruby Objects:

Chaining Statements Together

Ruby doesn’t require us to use any character to separate commands, unless we want to chain multiple statements together on a single line. In this case, a semicolon (;) is used as the separator. However, if you put every statement on its own line (as we’ve been doing until now), the semicolon is completely optional.

If you chain multiple statements together in the interactive shell, only the output of the last command that was executed will be displayed to the screen:

3. See also: Mastering ruby blocks in less than 5 minutes