From: "Alexandru E. Ungur" <alexandru@...>
Date: 2006-07-29T20:29:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby comprehensive "slow" reference

>>> sender: "Leslie Viljoen" date: "Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 07:06:17PM +0900" <<<EOQ
> Hi!
Hi,

> I tried to find online explanations for the '%' and '?' operators used
> by Florian in an earlier post, but could not. The closest I saw were
> quick-references, but is there a comprehensive "slow" reference
> anywhere? None of the quick ones I saw listed those operators.
Here's one nice quick reference I just find a couple of days ago:
http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html 
Got that link from this site:
http://mypage.bluewin.ch/yuppi/links/cheatsheets.html
which may have references to other ruby quick refs as well, haven't
taken a really good look at it.

However, that one is still too quick :) it does not explain what you 
need, but here is a short explanation:

? is a conditional operator, e.g.

    a = (1 == 2) ? 3 : 4 # => 4


% usually wears two hats... one is
the modulus operator:

    5 % 4 # => 1

the other one is to format strings:

    "%08b" % 17 # => "00010001"
    "%02X" % 17 # => "11"


Hope it helps,
Alex