From: Francis Hwang <sera@...>
Date: 2005-04-22T23:24:26+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] HighLine (#29)

Hi,

Not that this necessarily mitigates the educational value of this Quiz,  
but: EasyPrompt sort of does what you're saying below.

http://easyprompt.rubyforge.org/

Example:

irb(main):001:0> require 'easyprompt'
   => true
   irb(main):002:0> prompt = EasyPrompt.new
   => #<EasyPrompt:0x5a42a0  
@stdout=#<EasyPrompt::MockableStdout:0x5a3e04>>
   irb(main):003:0> fname = prompt.ask( "What's your first name?" )
   What's your first name? John
   => "John"
   irb(main):004:0> lname = prompt.ask( "What's your last name?", "Doe" )
   What's your last name? [Doe]
   => "Doe"
   irb(main):005:0> correct = prompt.ask( "Is your name #{ fname } #{  
lname }?", true, :boolean )
   Is your name John Doe? [y]
   => true

It's mockable, too! Everything must be mockable.



On Apr 22, 2005, at 8:45 AM, Ruby Quiz wrote:

> The three rules of Ruby Quiz:
>
> 1.  Please do not post any solutions or spoiler discussion for this  
> quiz until
> 48 hours have passed from the time on this message.
>
> 2.  Support Ruby Quiz by submitting ideas as often as you can:
>
> http://www.rubyquiz.com/
>
> 3.  Enjoy!
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 
> =-=-=-=-=-=
>
> When you stop and think about it, methods like gets(), while handy,  
> are still
> pretty low level.  In running Ruby Quiz I'm always seeing solutions  
> with helper
> methods similar to this:
>
> 	# by Markus Koenig
> 	
> 	def ask(prompt)
> 		loop do
> 			print prompt, ' '
> 			$stdout.flush
> 			s = gets
> 			exit if s == nil
> 			s.chomp!
> 			if s == 'y' or s == 'yes'
> 				return true
> 			elsif s == 'n' or s == 'no'
> 				return false
> 			else
> 				$stderr.puts "Please answer yes or no."
> 			end
> 		end
> 	end
>
> Surely we can make something like that better!  We don't always need  
> Rails or a
> GUI framework and there's no reason writing a command-line application  
> can't be
> equally smooth.
>
> This week's Ruby Quiz is to start a module called HighLine (for  
> high-level,
> line-oriented interface).  Ideally this module would eventually cover  
> many
> aspects of terminal interaction, but for this quiz we'll just focus on  
> getting
> input.
>
> What I really think we need here is to take a page out of the optparse  
> book.
> Here are some general ideas:
>
> 	age = ask("What is your age?", Integer, :within => 0..105)
> 	num = eval "0b#{ ask( 'Enter a binary number.',
> 	                      String, :validate => /^[01_]+$/ ) }"
> 	
> 	if ask_if("Would you like to continue?") # ...
>
> None of these ideas are etched in stone.  Feel free to call your input  
> method
> prompt() or use a set of classes.  Rework the interface any way you  
> like.  Just
> be sure to tell us how to use your system.
>
> The goal is to provide an easy-to-use, yet robust method of requesting  
> input.
> It should free the programmer of common concerns like calls to chomp()  
> and
> ensuring valid input.
>
>

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/