Write Multiline Arithmetic in Ruby

Question

How to write multiline arithmetic properly in Ruby? Previously, i have tried something like y, then i realized there is something wrong with that code. I need to write multiline arithmetic due to my very long equation.

a = 5
b = 5

x = (a + b) / 2

puts x # 5, as expected

y = (
      a
      + b
    ) /
    2

puts y # 2, what happened?

Answer 1

(
  expr1
  expr2
 )

is actually, in Ruby, the same as

(expr1; expr2)

which just executes the first expression (for side effects) and returns the second one (also after evaluating it)

Answer 2

The Ruby parser will assume a statement has ended if it looks like it has ended at an end of the line.

What you can to do prevent that is to leave the arithmetic operator just before a new line, like this:

a = 1
b = 2
c = a + 
    b

And you'll get the result you expect.