undefined method in controller action new

Question

I'm getting a strange error message, not much information is given and i'm quite confused.

undefined method ` ' for #<User::PhoneNumbersController:0x007ff2259fa320>

router.rb

namespace :user do

    resources :phone_numbers, only: [:new, :create]
end

controllers/user/phone_numbers_controller.rb

class User::PhoneNumbersController < User::UserController

  def new
    @phonenumber = PhoneNumber.new
  end

end

models/phone_number.rb

class PhoneNumber < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
end

It's failing at this line: @phonenumber = PhoneNumber.new

Is my design pattern wrong? the stack trace doesn't say much...

Thanks to Max's answer

I indeed have "fallen victim to to the evil non-breaking space character" or NBSP. I had one on the left of the instance variable @phonenumber .

Answer 1

You have fallen victim to to the evil non-breaking space character or one of its cousins such as the hair space.

While visibly identical the Ruby parser does not treat the non-breaking space character U+00A0 the same as the normal U+0020 character. Ruby instead treats it as an identifier. Which is why you get undefined method ` ' .

Turn on the hidden characters in your editor and go hunting for those pesky NBSP's.