From: Marnen Laibow-Koser <marnen@...>
Date: 2009-12-11T01:51:34+09:00
Subject: Re: human-readable listing of array elements

Aldric Giacomoni wrote:
> Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
>> 
>> 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
> 
> It is pretty, and (like Robert's solution) handles the case where the 
> array has no elements. I wouldn't put that into Enumerable though, not 
> sure how it would handle a hash, for instance :)
> Do you think if / elsif / else is better in this situation than "case 
> self.size"? 

Yes.  case won't handle <= conditions AFAIK.

> What about in general?
> I know it's usually accepted that instead of several elsifs, one should 
> use 'case', but I usually try to avoid 'elsif' altogether.

Use whichever syntax is better suited to what you need.  There's nothing 
wrong with elsif IMHO.

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