From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-02-21T08:33:48+09:00
Subject: Re: displaying user inputed arrays

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 4:57 PM, Todd Benson <caduceass@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Isaac Toothyxdip <toothyxdip@gmail.com> wrote:
>  > Isaac Toothyxdip wrote:
>  >  > Thanks that works!
>  >  >
>  >  > but one thing i dont really get what is going on with (gets.scan
>  >  > /[\w'-]*/) - [""] ?

scan /[\w'-]*/

...returns an array of everything that matches the regular expression /[\w'-]*/

This returns every string that has zero or more of a word character
(\w), an apostrophe ('), or a hyphen (-).  The - [""] part is to
subtract all empty strings from the array.  I just noticed, however,
though that you can omit that last bit if you use /[\w'-]+/ instead
(the + instead of the *).  That scans for _one_ or more, instead of
_zero_ or more characters.

Same code, but the scan changed...

a, n = nil
puts "Please enter 5 words"
until (a = gets.scan /[\w'-]+/).length == 5
  puts "Please type in exactly FIVE words, thanks."
end
puts "You would like to print out which word number? (1-5)"
until (1..5).include? (n = gets.chomp.to_i)
  puts "Please pick a number 1 through 5"
end
puts a[n - 1]

Todd