From: Chris Roos <chris@...>
Date: 2005-05-06T08:56:51+09:00
Subject: Re: String Manipulation Nuby Question

David A. Black wrote:
> 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
> 
Hmm, an hours work and a five line implementation replaced by one line a 
matter of minutes...  I have a long way to go ;-)

Thanks for your help.