From: Charles Steinman <acharlieblue@...>
Date: 2005-08-16T23:01:13+09:00
Subject: Re: newbie, to_s question


EdUarDo wrote:
>      def to_s
> 	puts "#@name"
>      end
> end
>
>
> I do:
>
> tactic = Tactic.new
> tactic.loadDefaultTactic
> puts tactic
>
> and get:
>
> 4-4-2
> #<Tactic:0xb78db8fc>
>
>
> Why do I get the internal representation of Tactic?
>
> Why is not the response '4-4-2' only?

You are not returning "4-4-2" in to_s. You are directly printing
"4-4-2" with puts in the to_s method. The return value of puts is nil.
So to_s is printing "4-4-2" and then returning nil. And when to_s
returns nil, puts will instead use inspect to get a string for output.
So the second puts prints tactic.inspect.

You want your to_s method to look something like this:

def to_s
  @name.to_s
end