ruby on rails - '-%>' (minus sign) at the end of a ERb sequence

Question

What's the point of using '-' (minus sign) at the end of a ERb sequence?

Example:

<% 3.times do -%>
  FooBar<br />
<% end -%>
Sometext

Regardless of whether I use '-' or not, a browser renders the same output.

Thanks, Aplha.

Answer 1

Before Rails 3, ERB adds additional spaces before and after the value when rendering the HTML content. In HTML spaces are not significant, except when you are using special tags such as <pre>.

Using the - sign forced ERB to avoid additional spaces.

This is completely useless in Rails 3.