Tap that object

tap_or_no_tap.rb

# To tap
def activate_person(person_id)
  Person.find(person_id).tap do |person|
    person.activate!
  end
end

# or not to tap
def activate_person(person_id)
  person = Person.find(person_id)
  person.activate!
  person
end

# that is the question

Object#tap makes me 😡.

Triple 😡 if you call it the K-Combinator.

To be fair, most use Object#tap when there's more than one thing to be done with the object.

Same thing though, then it is:

Person.find(person_id) do |person|
  person.this
  person.that
  person.the_other_thing
end

vs.

person = Person.find(person_id)
person.this
person.that
person.the_other_thing
person

First one can be:

def activate_person(person_id)
  Person.find(person_id).tap(&:activate!)
end

Which looks a bit more pretty to me.

@franciscoj yeah, that I could actually get behind.

@pjb3 do you have any particular reason to prefer the no-tap version? In what way is the tap version worse, in your view?

(I actually like tap, but I don't have any real rationale for why … I'd love to see a reasoned argument for one way or the other.)

@glv @pjb3 A few months back @brixen saw me using #tap and lamented on how it's not ideal because it creates a new scope when a perfectly suitable one already exists. From what I remember he said it's not worth extending the stack for no good reason. Why make the VM do more work when the context is already set up already? @brixen, did I get that right?