I am learning methods in Ruby and thought that the best way to learn them was to create a method that already exists. However, there are two problems that I am running in to:
I do not know what the capitalize method looks like
My solution (it does more than the original method does) seems like it can be refactored into something more elegant.
This is what I have come up with:
# method that capitalizes a word
def new_capitalize(string)
if string[0].downcase == "m" && string[1].downcase == "c"
puts "#{string[0].upcase}#{string[1].downcase}#{string[2].upcase}#{string[3..-1].downcase}"
else
puts "#{string[0].upcase}#{string[1..-1].downcase}"
end
end
name1 = "ryan"
name2 = "jane"
new_capitalize(name1) # prints "Ryan"
new_capitalize(name2) # prints "Jane"
str = "mCnealy"
puts str.capitalize
# prints "Mcnealy"
new_capitalize(str)
# prints "McNealy"
It seems as if the first part of my if statement could be made much more efficient. It does not need to be even close to my solution as long as it prints the second capital if the name begins with "mc"
Also, if someone could point me to where the built in capitalize method's code could be found that would be great too!
Thank you in advance!
Alright, how about:
module NameRules
refine String do
def capitalize
if self[0..1].downcase == 'mc'
"Mc#{self[2..-1].capitalize}"
else
super
end
end
end
end
Then to use it:
class ThingWithNames
using NameRules
def self.test(string)
string.capitalize
end
end
ThingWithNames.test('mclemon') # => "McLemon"
ThingWithNames.test('lemon') # => "Lemon"
If we were starting from scratch and not using the C implemented code:
module NameRules
refine String do
def capitalize
if self[0..1].downcase == 'mc'
"Mc#{self[2..-1].capitalize}"
else
new_string = self.downcase
new_string[0] = new_string[0].upcase
new_string
end
end
end
end
Reference materials:
String#capitalize source
A really good presentation on refinements
First, in my opinion, doing anything other than capitalizing the first letter of the string should be a different method or an optional arg you pass. Second, if you are trying to mimic the core lib behavior than you could monkey-patch String.
class String
def capitalize
self[0].upcase << self[1..-1].downcase
end
end
The closest to an official ruby implementation is probably Rubinius
https://github.com/rubinius/rubinius/blob/377d5c958bc8239514fb98701b75859c6b51b9d4/core/string.rb#L332
Related
I need to write a ruby method that reverses a string only if it has less than four characters.
# Write a method that reverses
# a string ONLY if it's shorter than
# 4 letters.
# Otherwise, the string is
# returned as-is.
# (Hint: strings have
# a built-in .length method!)
# conditional_reverse("yo")
# => "oy"
# conditional_reverse("hello")
# => "hello"
Here is the code I came up with.
def conditional_reverse(string)
good = string.length
if good < 4
puts string.reverse
else
puts string
end
puts conditional_reverse("cat")
end
When I run it in repl I get the following response
:conditional_reverse
I have no idea what i'm doing wrong.
just put puts conditional_reverse("cat") out side our def
def conditional_reverse(string)
good = string.length
if good < 4
puts string.reverse
else
puts string
end
end
conditional_reverse("cat")
You are callind your method in its definition. Avoid it if you are not writing a recursive method.
def conditional_reverse(s)
s.length < 4 ? s.reverse : s
end
The answer provided by #Ursus is perfect, but in case you want to go with your way the change you have to do is this;
def conditional_reverse(string)
good = string.length
if good < 4
puts string.reverse
else
puts string
end
end
puts conditional_reverse("cat")
What the others said, plus...
You get that response from irb because in recent versions of Ruby, a method definition returns the method name as a symbol.
Also, your problem specifies that the string should be reversed, not that the string should be output reversed; so you should remove the puts calls and just manipulate the string.
For the benefit of your readers, I recommend being specific with your names. good = string.length could be changed to needs_reversing = string.length < 4, for example.
This is a part of my file:
project(':facebook-android-sdk-3-6-0').projectDir = new File('facebook-android-sdk-3-6-0/facebook-android-sdk-3.6.0/facebook')
project(':Forecast-master').projectDir = new File('forecast-master/Forecast-master/Forecast')
project(':headerListView').projectDir = new File('headerlistview/headerListView')
project(':library-sliding-menu').projectDir = new File('library-sliding-menu/library-sliding-menu')
I need to extract the names of the libs. This is my ruby function:
def GetArray
out_file = File.new("./out.txt", "w")
File.foreach("./file.txt") do |line|
l=line.scan(/project\(\'\:(.*)\'\).projectDir/)
File.open(out_file, "w") do |f|
l.each do |ch|
f.write("#{ch}\n")
end
end
puts "#{l} "
end
end
My function returns this:
[]
[["CoverFlowLibrary"]]
[["Android-RSS-Reader-Library-master"]]
[["library"]]
[["facebook-android-sdk-3-6-0"]]
[["Forecast-master"]]
My problem is that I find nothing in out_file. How can I write to a file? Otherwise, I only need to get the name of the libs in the file.
Meditate on this:
"project(':facebook-android-sdk-3-6-0').projectDir'".scan(/project\(\'\:(.*)\'\).projectDir/)
# => [["facebook-android-sdk-3-6-0"]]
When scan sees the capturing (...), it will create a sub-array. That's not what you want. The knee-jerk reaction is to flatten the resulting array of arrays but that's really just a band-aid on the code because you chose the wrong method.
Instead consider this:
"project(':facebook-android-sdk-3-6-0').projectDir'"[/':([^']+)'/, 1]
# => "facebook-android-sdk-3-6-0"
This is using String's [] method to apply a regular expression with a capture and return that captured text. No sub-arrays are created.
scan is powerful and definitely has its place, but not for this sort of "find one thing" parsing.
Regarding your code, I'd do something like this untested code:
def get_array
File.new('./out.txt', 'w') do |out_file|
File.foreach('./file.txt') do |line|
l = line[/':([^']+)'/, 1]
out_file.puts l
puts l
end
end
end
Methods in Ruby are NOT camelCase, they're snake_case. Constants, like classes, start with a capital letter and are CamelCase. Don't go all Java on us, especially if you want to write code for a living. So GetArray should be get_array. Also, don't start methods with "get_", and don't call it array; Use to_a to be idiomatic.
When building a regular expression start simple and do your best to keep it simple. It's a maintainability thing and helps to reduce insanity. /':([^']+)'/ is a lot easier to read and understand, and accomplishes the same as your much-too-complex pattern. Regular expression engines are greedy and lazy and want to do as little work as possible, which is sometimes totally evil, but once you understand what they're doing it's possible to write very small/succinct patterns to accomplish big things.
Breaking it down, it basically says "find the first ': then start capturing text until the next ', which is what you're looking for. project( can be ignored as can ).projectDir.
And actually,
/':([^']+)'/
could really be written
/:([^']+)'/
but I felt generous and looked for the leading ' too.
The problem is that you're opening the file twice: once in:
out_file = File.new("./out.txt", "w")
and then once for each line:
File.open(out_file, "w") do |f| ...
Try this instead:
def GetArray
File.open("./out.txt", "w") do |f|
File.foreach("./file.txt") do |line|
l=line.scan(/project\(\'\:(.*)\'\).projectDir/)
l.each do |ch|
f.write("#{ch}\n")
end # l.each
end # File.foreach
end # File.open
end # def GetArray
In this example, the last english in the method definition seems to be unnecessary to me. I took it out and the code worked just as fine. Why does the book include it? Is there some sort of convention I am unaware of?
class Integer
def to_eng
if self == 5
english = 'five'
else
english = 'fifty-eight'
end
english
end
end
# I'd better test on a couple of numbers...
puts 5.to_eng
puts 58.to_eng
In ruby, the result of the last statement is always returned from the function. In this case the result is the value of the 'english' variable. However if we remove the last line of the method it still behaves the same because both lines returns the value that is set on 'english' variable.
english = 'five' #=> 'five'
english = 'fifty-eight' #=> 'fifty-eight'
Also this method could be written in more compact and elegant way using a ternary operator.
class Integer
def to_eng
self == 5 ? 'five' : 'fifty-eight'
end
end
The best reason for me is debuggability. In the showcased code, you can insert a debug statement just before the return, and know the result:
class Integer
def to_eng
if self == 5
english = 'five'
else
english = 'fifty-eight'
end
debugger
# or: puts "ENGLISH IS #{english}"
# or: binding.pry
# or whatever else you want
english
end
end
You can't do that if you leave off the last english, because the return value would change.
It ensures that the value in local variable 'english' is returned. The last executed statement in a method is what's returned.
In this case, it's not needed, but if (for example) the method was rewritten as...
def to_eng
english = 'fifty-eight'
english = 'five' if self == 5
end
... you would find that nothing gets returned for any number other than 5 because the last statement... not being executed... would just return nil.
I've been sifting through the prior questions and answers on stackoverflow, and I have gotten most of my question figured out. I figured out that I can't place a function call within a hash, without placing it within a proc, or a similar container.
What I'm ultimately trying to do is have a menu displayed, grab user input, and then iterate through the hash, and run the specified function:
def Main()
menu_titles = {"Answer1" => Proc.new{Choice1()}}
Menu(menu_titles)
end
def Choice1()
puts "Response answer"
end
def Menu(menu_titles)
menu_titles.each_with_index do |(key, value),index|
puts "#{index+1}. #{key}"
end
user_input = 0
menu_titles.each_with_index do |(key, value), index|
if index.eql?(user_input)
menu_titles[value]
break
end
end
end
Main()
The issue I'm having right now is that I'm not entering the functions that my hash calls for. Whether I use a return or a "puts", I either get a blank line or nothing at all. If anyone has other recommendations about my code, I'm all ears also. To be honest, I don't like using procs, but that's mostly because I don't entirely know how they work and where to use them.
Right now for my menus I have:
user_input = 1
if user_input == 1
Choice1()
...
end
Here's how I would refactor this:
class Menu
attr_reader :titles
# initialize sets up a hard-coded titles instance variable,
# but it could easily take an argument.
def initialize
#titles = {
"Answer1" => Proc.new{ puts "choice 1" },
"Answer2" => Proc.new{ puts "choice 2" }
}
end
# This is the only public instance method in your class,
# which should give some idea about what the class is for
# to whoever reads your code
def choose
proc_for_index(display_for_choice)
end
private
# returns the index of the proc.
def display_for_choice
titles.each_with_index { |(key,value), index| puts "#{index + 1}. #{key}" }
gets.chomp.to_i - 1 # gets will return the string value of user input (try it in IRB)
end
# first finds the key for the selected index, then
# performs the hash lookup.
def proc_for_index(index)
titles[titles.keys[index]]
end
end
If you're serious about Ruby (or object-oriented programming in general), I would highly recommend learning about the advantages of packaging your code into behavior-specific classes. This example allows you to do this:
menu = Menu.new
proc = menu.choose
#=> 1. Answer1
#=> 2. Answer2
2 #(user input)
proc.call
#=> choice 2
And you could actually run it on one line:
Menu.new.choose.call
I'm attempting to add conversion methods to the Numeric class but when I run the following lines of code I get a SystemStackError
puts 5.dollars.in(:euros) # => 6.5
puts 1.dollar.in(:yen)
Here is my Numeric class
class Numeric
##conversion_hash = {:dollar => {:yen => 0.013, :euros => 1.292, :rupees => 0.019}}
def method_missing(method_id)
name = method_id.to_s
if name =~ /^dollar|yen|euros|rupee|$/
self.send(name + 's')
else
super # pass the buck to superclass
end
end
def dollars()
puts "Called Dollars method"
#current_currency = :dollar
return self
end
def in(key)
if ##conversion_hash.has_key?(#current_currency)
puts "Current currency: #{#current_currency}"
conversion_rate = ##conversion_hash[#current_currency]
puts "Current conversion rate: #{conversion_rate}"
if conversion_rate.has_key?(key)
puts "we have that key"
puts"What am I? #{self}"
rate = conversion_rate[key]
puts "Rate to multiply by #{rate}"
return self.to_int * conversion_rate[key]
end
end
end
end
Any help is greatly appreciated.
You're getting infinite recursion in your method_missing because your regex isn't quite right. Try changing the line:
if name =~ /^dollar|yen|euros|rupee|$/
to:
if name =~ /^dollar|yen|euros|rupee$/
That extra | is causing anything to match the regex, so any other method is recursing with a continually extending suffix of s.
In this case it looks like puts seems to be trying to call to_ary when it's trying to determine the type its argument. I'm not exactly sure why it's not just using respond_to? though - it's deep in the C internals so I don't really know what's happening.
Your solution overcomplicated.
- You don't need to modify method_missing. Armando version works fine.
- You should simple dollar definition to hash plus
- find the way to call method_missing again from method in(this is your homework).
Working solution have only 1 line of code + 2 lines def surronding.