From: Marnen Laibow-Koser <marnen@...>
Date: 2009-12-11T00:03:59+09:00
Subject: Re: human-readable listing of array elements

Aldric Giacomoni wrote:
> This took me less than a minute to write, but I don't know if it's as
> elegant as it could be. Are there more "Ruby-like ways(tm)" to write
> this?

array.inspect

Of course, that won't get you the "and".

> 
> def stringify array
>   return array[0] if array.size == 1
>   string = ""
>   array.each_with_index do |element, index|
>     case index
>       when array.size - 1 # last item
>         string += " and #{element}"
>       when 0
>         string += "#{element}"
>       else
>         string += ", #{element}"
>     end
>   end
>   string

Interesting question.

class Array # or perhaps module Enumerable
  def stringify(conjunction = 'and', separator = ', ')
    if self.size <= 1
      return self.to_s
    elsif self.size == 2
      return self.join " #{conjunction} "
    else
      array = self.dup
      array[-1] = [conjunction, array[-1]].join ' '
      array.join separator # proper English usage has comma before 'and'
    end
  end
end

> end

Best,
-- 
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen@marnen.org
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