From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2005-05-06T08:47:27+09:00
Subject: Re: String Manipulation Nuby Question

Hi --

On Fri, 6 May 2005, Chris Roos wrote:

> I have a Person with title, forename and surname (all of which are optional). 
> I want to return a 'pretty' name for this person in the format..
>
> title + <space> + forename + <space> + surname
>
> ..where any extraneous spaces are removed.
>
> My name method currently looks like this
>
> def name
> (
>  (title.to_s.strip.empty? ? "" : title.to_s.strip << " ") <<
>  (forename.to_s.strip.empty? ? "" : forename.to_s.strip << " ") <<
>  (surname.to_s.strip.empty? ? "" : surname.to_s.strip)
> ).strip
> end
>
[...]
> What I was originally going to ask was how to improve on the first 
> implementation above.  Even though (in my opinion) the second implementation 
> is a lot cleaner I'm still interested in whether it can be made even more 
> succinct as in 'the ruby way'?

I'd let Ruby do more of the work, especially the iterating through the
items.  Something like this might be suitable:

   class Person
     attr_accessor :title, :forename, :surname
     def name
       [title, forename, surname].compact.map {|s| s.strip }.join(" ")
     end
   end


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net