Passing nill value to custom method - ruby

Question

Can you please tell me why it is passing nil to check method? I am getting error main.rb:5:in `check': undefined method `%' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
my_array = Array.new
$output = String.new
def check(n)
if n%3 == 0
$output = $output + 'Pop '
elsif n.even?
$output = $output + 'Crackle '
elsif n.odd?
$output = $output + 'Snap '
end
end
for x in 1..6
my_array[x] = gets.chomp.to_i
end
my_array.each { |x| check(x) }
puts $output.my_array

Answer 1

The reason you are getting a nil in the beginning of the array is that you are manually setting the keys in the array which creates a hole since arrays are 0 indexed in Ruby:
ary = Array.new
ary[1] = "a"
ary[2] = "b"
ary[3] = "c"
# => [nil, "a", "b", "c"]
While you could salvage this code with:
my_array = Array.new
$output = String.new
def check(n)
if n%3 == 0
$output = $output + 'Pop '
elsif n.even?
$output = $output + 'Crackle '
elsif n.odd?
$output = $output + 'Snap '
end
end
for x in 0..5
my_array[x] = gets.chomp.to_i
end
my_array.each { |x| check(x) }
puts $output.my_array
A more idiomatically correct way to write this in Ruby is:
str = 5.times.map do
n = gets.chomp.to_i
if n%3 == 0
'Pop'
elsif n.even?
'Crackle'
elsif n.odd?
'Snap'
end
end.join(" ")
puts str
for String.new and Array.new are rarely used if ever used. Use blocks instead of methods unless you're planning to reuse it later. In Ruby you can use the methods from Enumerable to both iterate over and transform arrays, hashes, ranges and other types of objects so there rarely is a reason to iterate and modify an external variable like in other languages.

Answer 2

With for x in 0..5 you would then have
t.rb:21:in `<main>': undefined method `my_array' for "":String (NoMethodError)
because my_array is not a method that you can send to $output.
There are many ways to do the same thing in Ruby.
my_array = []
def check(n)
case
when n % 3 == 0
'Pop'
when n.even?
'Crackle'
when n.odd?
'Snap'
else 'boom !' # not necessary in this particular case
end
end
(1..6).each do | i |
print "#{i} Enter a number > "
my_array << gets.to_i
end
puts my_array.collect { |e| check(e) }.join(' ')
Execution :
$ ruby t.rb
1 Enter a number > 44
2 Enter a number > 66
3 Enter a number > 30494
4 Enter a number > 383849
5 Enter a number > 2234
6 Enter a number > 4333
Crackle Pop Crackle Snap Crackle Snap
Don't use global variables, like $output. In the ancient (imperative programming style) languages, it was a common bug to inadvertently modify a variable accessible from anywhere.
The object oriented paradigm has been invented to isolate variables (encapsulated in an
object) to make it more difficult to modify them accidentally.
You could have use an instance variable :
#output = ''
if n%3 == 0
#output << 'Pop '
but beeing defined in the special 'main' object, it is not protected against unwanted access.
chomp is not necessary before to_i, see this post
Use iterators instead of loops. for is imperative style (C, Java), which imposes you to manage
the begin and end indexes. In an object oriented language, you simply send an iterate message to a
collection object, which takes cares of the internal details.
if and case are expressions which return the last computed value. check() returns that value.
Your my_array.each { |x| check(x) } mutates the variable $output and returns no result. In a big program, a later maintenance could insert some processing that modifies $output before you use it (bug).
The functional programming paradigm (Scala, Elixir, Kotlin) tends to use immutable variables and use functions to transform data.
The new my_array.collect { |e| check(e) }.join(' ') iterates over my_array, transforms each element calling the function check(), produces a new (immutable) collection with these transformed elements, which is then transformed by the function join() to produce the final result.

Answer 3

You have
for x in 1..6
my_array[x] = gets.chomp.to_i
end
Which populates the array from indexes 1 through 6, all arrays begin at index 0 so, in your method
my_array.each { |x| check(x) }
The .each method will iterate through each element of the array, starting at 0, which in this case would be nil because you never assigned a value to that index, you could change your range to
for x in 0..6
my_array[x] = gets.chomp.to_i
end
And that would work, remember to use 2 dots and not 3, as
0..6
0...6
are different, the first one is inclusive, the second one is exclusive.
You can check up more about ranges here