From: calderson <chadalderson@...>
Date: 2008-04-16T15:25:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Noob Questions [arrays]

On Apr 15, 10:43 pm, Justin Collins <justincoll...@ucla.edu> wrote:
> RoRNoob wrote:
> > Be warned - I'm new to Ruby and programming in general, so I'm sure
> > this will be a trivial question for most of you.
>
> > I'm currently working through the exercises in the book Learn to
> > Program by Chris Pine. At the end of each chapter Chris has a little
> > programming problem that the reader is asked to solve. I've been able
> > to follow along just fine up until tonight.
>
> > The problem in question is at the end of Chapter 8 (Arrays and
> > Iterators): I have to write a program that asks the user to type in as
> > many words as they want (one word per line, continuing until they just
> > press Enter on an empty line) and then repeat the words back to them
> > in alphabetical order.
>
> > The program lives in a .rb file and is executed and ran from the
> > terminal.
>
> > Here is my code:
>
> > alphalist = []
> > alphalist.each do |item|
> >   puts 'type words one at a time and I will alphabetize them for you.'
> >   alphalist.push gets.chomp
> > end
> > puts alphalist.sort
>
> > When I run the .rb file, nothing happens. Any help is appreciated!
>
> Take a look at your alphalist: it's just an empty array. When you do
> alphalist.each, you are 'visiting' each item in the array, but there are
> none. So it just skips down to 'puts alphalist.sort' and then exits.
>
> -Justin

OK that helped - I'm able to get the array to load up and print out
with this:

alphalist = ['']
alphalist.each do |item|
  puts 'type words one at a time and I will alphabetize them for you.'
  alphalist.push gets.chomp
  puts alphalist.sort
end

But now I can't figure out how to keep it from printing until the user
enters an empty value. I've tried:

alphalist = ['']
alphalist.each do |item|
  puts 'type words one at a time and I will alphabetize them for you.'
  alphalist.push gets.chomp
  if gets == ''
    puts alphalist.sort
  end
end

... it prints a gets value twice, then starts again with "type words
one at a time and I will alphabetize them for you."

If i hit enter it just puts a blank line.