Does Ruby have something similar to PHP's =&

Ruby
1

I’m trying to write a class that relies on references, so I really want
to retain the address of an object reference passed into a method. If I
simply use @lhs = lhs (lhs is passed in as an argument), how can I be
sure to just get the reference? Is there some way to just disable the
overloaded operator? What about writing a virtual method that gets self
to return a hexadecimal value of itself? Any other tricks you can think
of?

2

In Ruby, assignment is always by reference, and the assignment operator
cannot be overloaded. No tricks are necessary (rule of thumb: if you
need to rely on tricks, you are probably doing it wrong).

3

Chris Ward wrote in post #1179016:

so I really want to retain the address of an object reference
passed into a method

how can I be
sure to just get the reference?

class Dog
attr_accessor :name

def initialize(name)
@name = name
end
end

def do_stuff(dog)
dog.name = “hello”
end

dog = Dog.new(“Sir James”)
puts dog.name

do_stuff(dog)
puts dog.name

–output:–
Sir James
hello

data = [1, 2, 3]

def do_stuff(arr)
arr << “hello”
end

do_stuff(data)
p data

–output:–
[1, 2, 3, “hello”]

  1. However, in ruby some objects are immutable, e.g Integers, and that
    doesn’t work:

x = 1

def do_stuff(val)
val += 1
end

do_stuff(1)
puts x

–output:–
1

The line val += 1 creates a new Integer, and assigns it to the local
variable val, leaving x unaffected.