In Ruby 2.0 we were first introduced to keyword arguments.Keyword Arguments are really useful and they clean up the redundant code.

Pre 2.0

def get _stuff(options={})
    first = options.fetch(:first)
    last = options.fetch(:last)
end

Now

def get_stuff(last:'last',first:'first')
end

So now we dont need to fetch arguments out of a hash we can just pass it along to the function and it becomes available as arguments.

But with comes at a cost.If you want to specify optional arguments this breaks really easily.Lets take this example.We have a method with two keyword arguments and we want to override the first argument

def get_stuff(first:"first",last:'last')
end

get_stuff("really_first")
#ArgumentError: wrong number of arguments (1 for 0)

We get this error because the method expects there to be a key value in the arguments of the method.Moreover ruby spits out its regular ArgumentError wrong number of arguments(1 for 0).

Currently there is not go way to avoid this sort of issue.Nevertheless keyword arguments offer more flexibility and structure to the code.We can also mix together a hash and keyword argument.

def ff(test:1,more:10)
   "#{test} #{more}"
end

hash = { test: 2, more: 1000}

ff hash # => "2 1000"

This code works well until the hash keys are the same as the keyword argument

hash = { test: 2, more: 1000, extra: 1}

ff hash # => ArgumentError: unknown keyword: extra

Again there is no good way around this apart from cleaning up the arguments before you pass it to the function