From: botp <botpena@...>
Date: 2009-12-11T11:44:20+09:00
Subject: Re: human-readable listing of array elements

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Aldric Giacomoni <aldric@trevoke.net> 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?
>
> 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
> end
> --


just joing the fun of ruby,

C:\prg>cat test3.rb

def stringify array
  string = ""
  array.each_with_index do |element, index|
    string << case index
                when 0
                  ""
                when (as=array.size) - 1 # last item
                  (as < 3 ? "" : "," ) + " and "
                else
                  ", "
              end << "#{element}"
  end
  string
end

s=[]
%w(this is a test). each do |element|
  p stringify(s<<[element])
end

C:\prg>ruby -W0 test3.rb
"this"
"this and is"
"this, is, and a"
"this, is, a, and test"

best regards -botp