Ruby newbie newline question

From	Gary McGath <garym@REMOVEmcgathREMOVE.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.ruby
Subject	Ruby newbie newline question
Date	2012-10-08 14:18 -0400
Organization	Mad Scientists' Union
Message-ID	<k4v5ee$o1l$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)

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I'm an experienced programmer but a complete beginner at Ruby.

I've tried to find an explanation of how newlines affect Ruby syntax,
without success. Some websites claim that Ruby doesn't care about
newlines, which is clearly false.

The following code works:

if i == 1
   print "one"
elsif i == 2
  print "two"
end

If I put the same code all on one line, it gets an error ("unexpected
kELSIF, expecting $end"). But if I add "then"s, i.e.,

if i == 1 then print "one" elsif i == 2 then print "two" end

then it works.

Could someone explain just what newlines do in cases like these, or at
least provide some guidelines to when I need them?

-- 
Gary McGath    http://www.mcgath.com

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Ruby newbie newline question Gary McGath <garym@REMOVEmcgathREMOVE.com> - 2012-10-08 14:18 -0400
  Re: Ruby newbie newline question Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com> - 2012-10-08 22:44 +0200
    Re: Ruby newbie newline question Gary McGath <garym@REMOVEmcgathREMOVE.com> - 2012-10-08 17:57 -0400
      Re: Ruby newbie newline question Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com> - 2012-10-09 18:58 +0200

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