Meaning of the word yield

Question

Currently, I'm reading "The Well-Grounded Rubyist" by David A. Black, and I'm stuck at chapter 10.9 (Enumerators and the next dimension of enumerability). My question is about the yield method. What is the meaning of the word yield in the Ruby context? My native language is Russian, and Google Translate shows me a bunch of translation variants, that are confusing me. Some of them are: give, bring, surrender (give up), produce, agree, comply and many others.

UPD: please, pay attention to the fact, that I'm trying to understand the meaning of the Enumerator::Yielder#yield method, but not the yield keyword itself.

UPD_2: I've found an interesting article about Enumerators: "Lazy Enumerators in Ruby".

Delate

@JeffH: The OP is asking about the yield method, not the yield keyword. – Sideboard

@Jörg W Mittag: I see that now. I amended my answer. – Coelostat

Without meaning to criticise you, it might have been a good idea to mention you weren't talking about the yield keyword - I've programmed in Ruby for over two years, and I haven't actually used the yield method. – Cosmo

Very interesting question! I am a not an english native speaker myself and I am stuck with this word as well (while reading the same book), which is not well translated in french. – Lazar

Answer 1

The word yield doesn't really have any special meaning in the context of Ruby. It means the same thing as it means in every other programming language, or in programming and computer science in general.

It is usually used when some kind of execution context surrenders control flow to a different execution context. For example, in Unix, there is a sched_yield function which a thread can use to give up the CPU to another thread (or process). With coroutines, the term yield is generally used to transfer control from one coroutine to another. In C#, there is a yield keyword, which is used by an iterator method to give up control to the iterating method.

And in fact, this last usage is exactly identical to the usage of the Enumerator::Yielder#yield method in Ruby, which you were asking about. Calling this method will suspend the enumerator and give up control to the enumerating method.

Example:

fibs = Enumerator.new do |y|
  a, b = 0, 1
  y.yield a
  loop do
    y.yield b
    a, b = b, a + b
  end
end

puts fibs.next #  0
puts fibs.next #  1
puts fibs.next #  1
puts fibs.next #  2
puts fibs.next #  3
puts fibs.next #  5
puts fibs.next #  8
puts fibs.next # 13
puts fibs.next # 21

As you see, there is an infinite loop. Obviously, if this loop just ran on its own, it wouldn't be of much use. But since every time it hits the yield method, it gives up control until it is called again, this will produce the Fibonacci numbers one by one, essentially representing an infinitely long list of all Fibonacci numbers.

There is another method, Fiber.yield, which serves a similar purpose. (In fact, I already described it above, because Fiber is just Ruby's name for coroutines.) Inside a Fiber, you call Fiber.yield to give up control back to the execution context that originally gave control to you.

Lastly, there is the yield keyword, which is used inside a method body to give up control to the block that was passed into the method.

Note that, at least in the Enumerator case (i.e. the first example), you can additionally interpret yield as to produce, since the Enumerator produces a new value, every time it calls yield.

Proboscis

+1 for the Comp Sci context and example that directly answers OP. – Coelostat

When you say "The word yield doesn't really have any special meaning in the context of Ruby. It means the same thing as it means in every other programming language, or in programming and computer science in general.", you're referring to the yield method, as opposed to when you said "The usage of the yield keyword in Ruby has nothing whatsoever to do with the usual CS definition of yield." about the keyword here, right? – Cosmo

@Andrew Grimm: Actually, it looks more like I changed my mind. I'll have to think about that. – Sideboard

Considering that in almost all languages that have yield, it does something very different "It means the same thing as it means in every other programming language" doesn't mean much. xd – Pyroconductivity

Answer 2

In the context of yielding in an Enumerator, the meaning is closest to "bring forth." The Enumerator calls the yield method of its yielder object, which "brings forth" any value passed to it.

give_me = Enumerator.new do |yielder|
  (1..5).each do |n|
    yielder.yield n
  end
end

5.times do
  p give_me.next
end

This results in:
1
2
3
4
5

In the case of yielding to a block, the meaning is closest to "surrender." The method with the yield statement surrenders execution to whatever block you passed to that method.

def wage_war
  p "What should I do?"
  yield
end

wage_war { p "Surrender!" }

Orangewood

-1. The OP is asking about the yield method, not the yield keyword. – Sideboard

Fixed answer to include meaning of yield in Enumerator – Orangewood

And reverted to +1. Nice answer! "bring forth" has a warm old-timey ring to it. I like it. – Sideboard

What about word "emerge"? Is it proper one? – Delate

Well, "emerge" is an intransitive verb, so although it has a similar meaning, it doesn't really describe the action that the yielder is taking on the value. – Orangewood

Answer 3

You may find it amusing to read what Programming Ruby 1.9 has to say about the yield keyword:

Programming-language buffs will be pleased to know that the keyword yield was chosen to echo the yield function in Liskov’s language CLU, a language that is more than thirty years old and yet contains features that still haven’t been widely exploited by the CLU-less.

More reading:

A History of CLU (pdf)

Barbara Liskov (wikipedia)

Conciliatory

Answer 4

@Prostosuper, the related definition I like best is this one:

concede, cede, grant (give over; surrender or relinquish to the physical control of another)

In @Jamie Forrest's example, when wage_war is called, "What should I do?" is printed first, then flow control is yielded (conceded, ceded, granted, given over) to the block that wage_war was called with, resulting in "Surrender!" being printed. After that block is complete, flow control resumes in wage_war. If there were another statement after the yield, it would be executed when flow control resumed in wage_war after "Surrender!" was printed.

EDIT: @Prostosuper asked about yield as it pertains to Enumerators, not blocks, and my example discusses its use in blocks. A SO question (with answers) about Enumerator::Yielder#yield is here. The sense of the definition still applies.

Coelostat

Answer 5

yield, in the ruby context "brings" :) the block passed as a parameter to your method.

def my_method
    p "I have to say something:"
    yield
end

my_method do
   p "hello world!"
end

prints

I have to say something:
hello world

the code p "hello world" is executed when my_method reaches the yield

Eggleston

-1. The OP is asking about the yield method, not the yield keyword. – Sideboard

yield method? please add a reference. – Eggleston

@Jörg W Mittag: It is not entirely clear that the OP knows yield is normally a keyword. It seems quite likely that the word "method" is an incorrect assumption on prostosuper's part. The Fiber method is fairly obscure and I would not assume that's what is meant unless it's explicitly stated. – Sociability

Indeed, I doubt the book even introduce the Fiber class, it start talking about Threads in the chapter 14... – Eggleston

@Chuck: the OP explicitly talks about Enumerators, not blocks. The yield method is part of the Enumerator API (more precisely: the Enumerator::Yielder API). And the OP explicitly mentions the yield method. "My question is about yield method." -- I don't know what could be clearer than that. – Sideboard

great, that's a reference! Thanx! – Eggleston

Answer 6

In c# yield in a loop is something like a return keyword and is part of the loop that iterates the list. Why not using return then? Because with yield you give back control to the loop while iterating the values in that list. So may be yield is more like a control mechanism.

Lamas