How Ripper parses variables

Ruby has a few different kinds of variables, and Ripper expresses them with a few different nodes.

Here are the different variables in Ruby:

a   # Local variable (or method call on self)
$a  # Global variable
A   # Constant
@a  # Instance variable
@@a # Class variable

# Bonus, not variables:
a()       # explicit method call (with parens) on implicit self
a b       # explicit method call (with args) on implicit self
self.a    # explicit method call (with dot) on explicit self

Here is how Ripper parses the above code:

# Ripper.sexp_raw(...) =>

[:program,
 [:stmts_add,
  [:stmts_add,
   [:stmts_add,
    [:stmts_add,
     [:stmts_add,
      [:stmts_add,
       [:stmts_add,
        [:stmts_add, [:stmts_new], [:vcall, [:@ident, "a", [1, 0]]]],
        [:var_ref, [:@gvar, "$a", [2, 0]]]],
       [:var_ref, [:@const, "A", [3, 0]]]],
      [:var_ref, [:@ivar, "@a", [4, 0]]]],
     [:var_ref, [:@cvar, "@@a", [5, 0]]]],
    [:method_add_arg, [:fcall, [:@ident, "a", [8, 0]]], [:arg_paren, nil]]],
   [:command,
    [:@ident, "a", [9, 0]],
    [:args_add_block,
     [:args_add, [:args_new], [:vcall, [:@ident, "b", [9, 2]]]],
     false]]],
  [:call, [:var_ref, [:@kw, "self", [10, 0]]], :".", [:@ident, "a", [10, 5]]]]]

(Ripper-preview)

Let’s check out those nodes.

:vcall

# a
[:vcall, [:@ident, "a", [1, 0]]]]

A :vcall is a bareword, either a local variable lookup or a method call on self. Used alone, this can only be determined at runtime, depending on the binding. If there’s a local variable, it will be used. My guess is that :vcall is short for “variable/call”

Interestingly, there is a single-expression case which could be disambiguated statically, but Ripper still uses :vcall:

# a b
[:command,
 [:@ident, "a", [1, 0]],
 [:args_add_block,
  [:args_add, [:args_new], [:vcall, [:@ident, "b", [1, 2]]]],
  false]]]]

:var_ref

# $a
[:var_ref, [:@gvar, "$a", [1, 0]]]
# A
[:var_ref, [:@const, "A", [1, 0]]]
# @a
[:var_ref, [:@ivar, "@a", [4, 0]]]
# @@aa
[:var_ref, [:@cvar, "@@a", [5, 0]]]

:var_ref (presumably “variable reference”) is shared by many of these examples, and can always be resolved to a variable lookup, never a method call. Its argument tells what kind of lookup to do (global, constant, instance, class), and what name to look up.

Method calls

Some Ruby can be statically known to be a method call, not a variable lookup:

# a(), explicit method call (with parens) on implicit self
[:method_add_arg, [:fcall, [:@ident, "a", [1, 0]]], [:arg_paren, nil]]
# self.a, explicit method call (with dot) on explicit self
[:call, [:var_ref, [:@kw, "self", [1, 0]]], :".", [:@ident, "a", [1, 5]]]
# a b, explicit method call (with arguments) on implicit self
[:command,
   [:@ident, "a", [10, 0]],
   [:args_add_block,
    [:args_add, [:args_new], [:vcall, [:@ident, "b", [10, 2]]]],
    false]]]

In these cases, :fcall, :call and :command are used to represent definite method sends.

Interestingly, :var_ref is used for self, too.