Ampersand Operator

This is how a function call with an ampersand looks like:

some_function(&an_object)

When used as shown above, the & operator induces a call to to_proc on the argument, and passes the resulting Proc object (explained in the box below) as a block to the method.

What’s a Proc? A Proc object encapsulates a function or a block in a way that can be passed around in a variable. We can initialize a Proc with a block like this:

mult = Proc.new { |x, y| x*y }

And then use the call method to invoke the block.

Therefore,

mult.call(4, 5)

returns 20.