From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2001-12-12T21:16:34+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:28339] Re: Reviews solicited for Ruby article


From: "Stephan K�mper" <Stephan.Kaemper@Schleswig-Holstein.de>
>
> Hi Harry,
>
> great to see people working on articles to spread thw word!
>
> Harry Ohlsen wrote:
> > Are there any errors in the code ... or can it be written more
> > clearly/succinctly, without making it hard for someone who hasn't seen
> > the language before to understand?
> >
> > Any suggestions on how to better explain anything?
> >
> > Feel free to post comments to the newsgroup ... I'm not easily offended
> > :-) ... but if you could send me an e-mail, that would be helpful,
> > because then I can send you a quick message when I have newer versions.
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Harry O.
>
> Well, I'm not through the whloe thing but I've got a comment on the
> first example. Well counting the "Hello world" one it's actually the
> 2nd one. You'll know what I mean anyway.
>
> IMHO the count_uppercase could me made more rubyish like the following:
>
> def count_uppercase( text )
>     # "Initialize" the hash with 0 and you can use it right away
>     # w/o the need to init each used element with 0
>     counts = Hash.new(0)
>     # Used an iterator here - it's more native in Ruby I think
>     text.each_byte { | c |
>         # Had to convert c to chr as each_byte leaves me with a Fixnum
>         c = c.chr
>         counts[c] += 1 if c =~ /[A-Z]/
>     }

Alternately,

    counts = Hash.new(0)
    text.scan(/[A-Z]/).each {|c| counts[c] += 1}

would possibly be fun to include in addition to the text.each_byte
approach . . . . sort of a footnote to convey some of Ruby's
versatility?

>     total = 0
>     # I'd prefer curly braces here,
>     # but how am I to tell what to use when?
>     counts.each_pair do |key, value|
>         puts "#{key} -> #{value}"
>         total += value
>     end
>     total
> end
>
> total = count_uppercase("This is only an EXAMPLE !!")
>
> puts "The total was #{total}"
>
>
> From an oo point of view I'd prefer to change some more things
> - One and only one job for each method
>   Make a distinction between output and computing
>   count_uppercase shoud do what its name implies: Count the uppercase
> letters
>   Perhaps it should return the hash with the counting results?
>
> - The output in count_uppercase might be refactored out of this method

I'd agree with these suggestions too.

> Anyway, I'll be happy to see suggestions to improve what I posted.
>
> Happy rubying!
>
> Stephan

Regards,

Bill