Correct indention for blank line in ruby? [closed]

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Is there a best practice in ruby coding style for the indentation of blank lines? For example, if I have a blank line between two method definitions within a class, should the blank line be indented to the same level as the method definitions, or should it be truly blank?

class Foo
  def bar
  end

  def baz
  end
end

For a specific example, in the code above, should the line between the end of bar's definition and def baz lines contain two spaces like the lines above and below it and a newline, or simply a newline?

I've tried googling this question, searching SO, and looking at style guides, but coming up empty. Maybe I'm phrasing it oddly? Does it not matter? Are there differing opinions? Is there a standard within Rails specifically that differs from the broader Ruby community?

Answer 1

Just about any style guide you look at will tell you to "avoid trailing whitespace", where trailing whitespace is any non-newline whitespace character on a line that is not followed by a non-whitespace character on the same line.

See https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide for example, or github's internal ruby style guide.

Since a blank line has no non-whitespace characters, any spaces or tabs on a blank line would constitute trailing whitespace, and should be avoided.

Answer 2

There's no point in putting whitespace on a line where there's no code and most editors and IDEs are not going to help you do this either. Have a look at any of the Rails or Ruby source code, which does not do this.