caller(p1 = v1) public

Returns the current execution stack—an array containing strings in the form “file:line” or “file:line: in `method”‘. The optional start parameter determines the number of initial stack entries to omit from the result.

Returns nil if start is greater than the size of current execution stack.

def a(skip)
  caller(skip)
end
def b(skip)
  a(skip)
end
def c(skip)
  b(skip)
end
c(0)   #=> ["prog:2:in `a'", "prog:5:in `b'", "prog:8:in `c'", "prog:10:in `<main>'"]
c(1)   #=> ["prog:5:in `b'", "prog:8:in `c'", "prog:11:in `<main>'"]
c(2)   #=> ["prog:8:in `c'", "prog:12:in `<main>'"]
c(3)   #=> ["prog:13:in `<main>'"]
c(4)   #=> []
c(5)   #=> nil
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September 10, 2012
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Reports originally defined method names, not invoked names in Ruby 1.9.x

In Ruby 1.8.7, the reported method names were those of the methods actually invoked, so if #b was an alias for #a, and #b was called, it would be reported as “… in `b’”. In Ruby 1.9, the same invocation is now reported as “… in `a’”.

Unfortunately, this change disables the hack that could formerly be used to create a variant of __method__ that returns the method as actually invoked. The new __callee__ method is no help with that, because it is currently synonymous with __method__.