(disclaimer — I’m not a Ruby programmer)

You’re right. Ruby blocks are similar to AS closures. What I like about the Ruby block syntax is that it makes it easy to define things that feel like part of the language. And the yield statement can make it easier to retain state as you pass control from one block to another, which is great for iterators.

For example, let’s say you wanted to create an array class that has something like ‘foreach’ but only if the array value matches a certain value.

class MyArray
   def eachMatchingIndex(obj)
      for i in 0..length
        if (self[i] == obj)
           yield(i)
        end
      end
   end
end