How to dynamically create a local variable?

Question

I have a variable var = "some_name" and I would like to create a new object and assign it to some_name. How can I do it? E.g.

var = "some_name" some_name = Struct.new(:name) # I need this a = some_name.new('blah') # so that I can do this. 

Answer 1

You cannot dynamically create local variables in Ruby 1.9+ (you could in Ruby 1.8 via eval):

eval 'foo = "bar"' foo  # NameError: undefined local variable or method `foo' for main:Object 

They can be used within the eval-ed code itself, though:

eval 'foo = "bar"; foo + "baz"' #=> "barbaz" 

Ruby 2.1 added local_variable_set, but that cannot create new local variables either:

binding.local_variable_set :foo, 'bar' foo # NameError: undefined local variable or method `foo' for main:Object 

This behavior cannot be changed without modifying Ruby itself. The alternative is to instead consider storing your data within another data structure, e.g. a Hash, instead of many local variables:

hash = {} hash[:my_var] = :foo 

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Note that both eval and local_variable_set do allow reassigning an existing local variable:

foo = nil eval 'foo = "bar"' foo  #=> "bar" binding.local_variable_set :foo, 'baz' foo  #=> "baz"