From: Dark Ambient Date: 2006-06-27T07:50:00+09:00 Subject: Re: Stumped:beginners question I finally have had more success, at least for the first part of the exercise. Thanks for all the help. I do have another question (will they ever stop) - in my code below as in Matthew's example the array.push doesn't take place till after the loop is exited. Why is that, can't they be added incrementally ? I did the array.push in the loop and it completely skipped over it, or seemed to at least. def sort words u_words = [] s_words = [] continue = true while continue puts words userword = gets.chomp.downcase u_words.push(userword) puts 'we now have these words in our list ' puts u_words puts 'shall we continue?' a = gets.chomp.downcase if a == 'yes' continue = true else continue = false end puts 'we now have these words in our list ' puts u_words end end sort 'Please enter a word for sorting' I have a ways to go to complete this little tiny project but I must not use array.sort. Stuart On 6/26/06, Matthew Smillie wrote: > On Jun 26, 2006, at 20:24, Dark Ambient wrote: > def sortwords > words = [] > continue = false > while continue > word = gets.chomp.downcase > if word == 'stop' > continue = false > elsif word == 'hello' > # or some other special case. > puts "hello yourself" > else > # default behaviour > words.push(word) > end > end > return words.sort > end > > sortwords # (input 'foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'stop') > => ["bar", "baz", "foo"] > > > matthew smillie. > >