From: Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2009-07-14T21:27:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Array function?

On Tuesday 14 July 2009 05:08:12 Justice Me wrote:
> #loop data into objects
> for i in (0..12)
> #create object array
> player[i] = Player.new
>
>   player[i].name = "PlayerName#{i}"
>   player[i].card = rand(12) + 1    #Here i don't know the function for
> this

You could do something convoluted like this, where you generate a random card 
number, then check to see if anybody else has that card, but that isn't really 
the way that card games work.

If you wanted to do it this way, you could do something along the lines of:


nobody_has_this_card = true
begin

  new_card = rand(52)

  player.each do |pl|
    if pl.card == new_card
      nobody_has_this_card = false
    end
  end
end until nobody_has_this_card

But you shouldn't do this.  This really isn't how card games work.  This is 
the equivalent of dealing cards to people by saying:

"ok, choose a random card"
"3 of diamonds"
"let me check... no, sorry, one of the players already has that one, try 
again"
"ok, 7 of spades"
"let me check.... ok, yeah, nobody has that one yet"

What you really want to do is create a deck of cards, shuffle it, then start 
handing out cards, removing them from the deck as you go.

The easiest way to do that is to create a list containing all the card values 
(there are various ways to do this, but I'll do a simplified idea):

deck = ["2h", "3h", "4h", "5h", "2s", "3s", "4s", "5s", "2d", "3d", "4d", 
"5d", "2c", "3c", "4c", "5c"]

Once you have the deck, you can shuffle it:

deck = deck.sort_by { rand }

Then hand out cards by popping elements off the list (equivalent to taking the 
top card off of a deck of cards)

card = deck.pop

If you use this route, you can ensure that each new player gets a unique card, 
and that the deck gets smaller each time.

Then, just like in a real card game, you would need to notice when you're 
running low on cards in the deck, shuffle them, etc.

Ben