Proposal: Deprecate let!

[andyw8]

let! seems to be one of the most often mis-used parts of RSpec's syntax.

The documentation says that let is for a memorised helper method, but very often I see it being used for setting up state, where a before block would be much more intention-revealing.

For the occasional cases where there is a need to store a reference to the result of the before block, a second argument could be passed, for example:

before(:each, :widgets_category) { Category.create!(name: "widgets") }

Thoughts?

[JonRowe]

let! seems to be one of the most often mis-used parts of RSpec's syntax.

I don't see that as a misuse, let is designed to give names to your setup, often you don't need them straight away but sometimes it's nicer to use let! than before { my_let }, I guess I consider an alternate name but personally I'm ok with let!.

before(:each, :widgets_category) { Category.create!(name: "widgets") }

Additionally we can't do this because before already takes additional arguments (metadata filters)

[yujinakayama]

I agree with @JonRowe. IMO let! is reasonable name since it represents side effects with ! and also is easy to be changed to let by removing 1 character.

[myronmarston]

Some users like let!; some don't. Those who don't like it can easily disable it in their projects:

module DisableLetBang
  def let!(*args)
    raise "let! is not allowed"
  end
end

RSpec.configure do |c|
  c.extend DisableLetBang
end

I don't think it makes sense for us to deprecate it and remove it, as that would create unnecessary work for those who like it and have been using it. Closing.

[andyw8]

Thanks for the feedback!