From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-03-23T06:26:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Any guides for good coding in Ruby?

On Mar 22, 2005, at 3:09 PM, Arfin wrote:

> Is there some kind of class to format numbers? Something to let you
> transform:
>
> 1	=>	"0001"
> 1234	=>	"1,234.00"

I'm not aware of a core Ruby tool for commiying numbers, but it's not 
hard to roll a solution:

def commify( number )
  � � � � text = number.to_s.reverse
  � � � � text.gsub!(/(\d\d\d)(?=\d)(?!\ d*\.)/, '\1,')
  � � � � text.reverse
  end

> I needed to display the day and month in a 00 format and the way I did
> it was adding a method to the Integer class
>
> class Integer
> 	def addZero
> 		return "0" + self.to_s if self.to_s.length == 1
> 		return self.to_s
> 	end
> end
> t = Time.now
> p "The date is: #{t.year}#{t.month.addZero}#{t.day.addZero}"
>
> What do you guys think of this solution?

Kernel#sprintf and it's shortcut cousin String#% will handle this for 
you.  Here's an example:

"%02d" % 1    => "01"

Also look into Time#strftime for tasks like the above.

> On a side note, could you guys give a few rules of thumb you follow in
> order to make your code clean and readable?

Of course, there are loads of rules here and every person that gives 
you a list will be different.  Common sense ideas like, "Use good 
variable names," apply in Ruby as they do everywhere else.

One of Ruby's great strengths is readability, I think.  Play to your 
strengths.  Give the extra five keystrokes to make things utterly 
clear, but don't be verbose if a concise line of code is obvious.

As always, common sense is needed.

James Edward Gray II