Concatenating strings with variables with Ruby - ruby

Question

I am writing a test script that opens a file with a list of URLs without the "www" and "com".
I am trying to read each line and put the line into the URL. I then check to see if it redirects or even exists.
My problem is when I read the line from the file and assign it to a variable. I then do a compare with what's in the URL after loading and what I initially put in there, but it seems to be adding a return after my variable.
Basically it is always saying redirect because it puts "http://www.line\n.com/".
How can I get rid of the "\n"?
counter = 1
file = File.new("Data/activeSites.txt", "r")
while (line = file.gets)
puts "#{counter}: #{line}"
counter = counter + 1
browser.goto("http://www." + line + ".com/")
if browser.url == "http://www." + line + ".com/"
puts "Did not redirect"
else
puts ("Redirected to " + browser.url)
#puts ("http://www." + line + ".com/")
puts "http://www.#{line}.com/"
end
Basically it is always saying redirect because it puts http://www.line and then return .com/
How can I get rid of the return?

Answer 1

Short answer: strip
"text\n ".strip # => "text"
Long answer:
Your code isn't very ruby-like and could be refactored.
# Using File#each_line, the line will not include the newline character
# Adding with_index will add the current line index as a parameter to the block
File.open("Data/activeSites.txt").each_line.with_index do |line, counter|
puts "#{counter + 1}: #{line}"
# You're using this 3 times already, let's make it a variable
url = "http://#{line}.com"
browser.goto(url)
if browser.url == url
puts "Did not redirect"
else
puts ("Redirected to " + browser.url)
puts url
end
end

Answer 2

That's because your lines are terminated by a newline. You need to strip it off:
while (line = file.gets)
line.strip!
puts "#{counter}: #{line}"
# ...
Note that there are better ways of iterating over the lines in a file:
File.foreach("Data/activeSites.txt") do |line|
# ...
end

Answer 3

This is your code after reindenting it to the "Ruby way":
counter = 1
file = File.new("Data/activeSites.txt", "r")
while (line = file.gets)
puts "#{counter}: #{line}"
counter = counter + 1
browser.goto("http://www." + line + ".com/")
if browser.url == "http://www." + line + ".com/"
puts "Did not redirect"
else
puts ("Redirected to " + browser.url)
#puts ("http://www." + line + ".com/")
puts "http://www.#{line}.com/"
end
It's not correct because it's missing a closing end for the while. But, it's also not dealing with file IO correctly.
This is how I'd write it:
File.foreach("Data/activeSites.txt") do |line|
puts "#{ $. }: #{ line }"
browser.goto("http://www.#{ line }.com/")
if browser.url == "http://www.#{ line }.com/"
puts "Did not redirect"
else
puts "Redirected to #{ browser.url }"
puts "http://www.#{ line }.com/"
end
end
File.foreach is a method inherited from IO. If you read the file correctly you don't need to strip or chomp, because Ruby will handle it correctly when IO.foreach reads the line.
Every time IO reads a line it increments the $. global, which is short-hand for $INPUT_LINE_NUMBER. There's no need to keep a counter. Using:
require 'english'
will enable the verbose names. See the English docs for more information.