From: Stefano Crocco <stefano.crocco@...>
Date: 2009-02-13T23:26:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Meaning of "<<"?

Alle Friday 13 February 2009, Chris Davies ha scritto:
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently trying to learn ruby, coming from a perl/unix
> background. I've been working through one of the many online tutorials
> and it's suddenly thrown in the "<<" operator.
>
> Now, I'm familiar with a the use of "<<" as a bitwise left shift
> and as a here doc, but this one throws me. The relevant URL is
> http://rubylearning.com/satishtalim/mutable_and_immutable_objects.html
> and here's a variation on the theme for illustrative purposes:
>
>     str = 'one'
>     str << 'two'
>     puts str		# onetwo
>
> It seems to me that << in this context is equivalent to +=, but I can't
> find any documentation explaining /why/ this is the case, and why I
> should use one in preference to the other. (Google really doesn't like
> "<<".)
>
> Any suggestions, please?
> Cheers,
> Chris

This is the documentation for the String << operator (that is, for the 
String#<< method):

     str << fixnum        => str
     str.concat(fixnum)   => str
     str << obj           => str
     str.concat(obj)      => str

     From Ruby 1.8
------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Append---Concatenates the given object to _str_. If the object is a
     +Fixnum+ between 0 and 255, it is converted to a character before
     concatenation.

        a = "hello "
        a << "world"   #=> "hello world"
        a.concat(33)   #=> "hello world!"

The difference between << and + is that << modifies the first string, while + 
creates a new string, made of the caracters of the first string followed by 
the characters of the second. Too see the difference, look at this example:

a = "first string"
b = "second string"
puts "Using +"
a + b 
puts a
puts b
puts "Using <<"
a << b
puts a
puts b

The output is:

Using +
first string
second string
Using <<
first stringsecond string
second string

As you can see, in the second case, a has been modified, while in the first 
case it wasn't.

In general, to obtain documentation about ruby classes and methods, you can 
use the ri command:

ri 'String#<<'

which will give the documentation I posted above. There's also an online API 
reference at http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/

I hope this helps

Stefano