From: Peter Versteegen <pversteegen@...>
Date: 2007-08-22T20:21:37+09:00
Subject: Pretty Printing

# Hi,

# I need some help in simplefying my life
# I need to create lots of tables from arrays and I need to provide
# each of the columns with a heading.  For eample, I have
# two headings "a-value" and "b-value" specified as follows:
a = ["a-value", "b-value"]
b = [10, 10]
# The array b contains the width of the field, so that I get:
#   a-value   b-value
# Two ways to do this are as follows:
puts "#{'a-value'.rjust(10)}#{'b-value'.rjust(10)}"
puts "#{a[0].rjust(b[0])}#{a[1].rjust(b[1])}"

# which is difficult to debug, so that I'm looking for
# a simpler process, specificaly by writing a function.
# The following one works:

def heading2(x, n)
   x.length.times do |i|
     print "#{x[i].rjust(n[i])}"
   end
   print "\n\n"
end

puts
heading2(a,b)

# But this approach doesn't.  Why not? Are there other ways to make  
this simpler?

def heading1(x, n)
   s = ""
   x.length.times do |i|
     s = s + "\#{\'" + x[i] + "\'.rjust(" + n[i].to_s + ")}"
   end
   p s
   print s
   puts s
   return s
end

heading1(a,b)
puts "#{heading1(a, b)}"
puts "\"#{heading1(a, b)}\""


# Thanks ahead. (NOTE: This file can be run from TextMate)



Peter Versteegen
pversteegen@gcnetmail.net