From: "Firestone, Mark - Technical Support" <mark.firestone@...>
Date: 2002-03-14T19:49:00+09:00
Subject: Newbie  -- Please help!!

First an apology for asking what are probably lamer questions.

Second, some backround... I am attempting to learn object orientated
programming.  I used to write programs in things you guys will probably not
like, such as Turbo Pascal. (In fact, I learned to program when I was 10 on
a PDP 11/70 running Oregon Pascal II) ...and...

I co-wrote a BBS program in my youth.  As part of the retrobbs "thing" I
want to bring it back as a telnet system with multi-user chat, and stuff...

...which brings me to my problem.  I was going to do this in freepascal, but
a character named Wayne Conrad (who is an old time friend of mine and helped
much with the old software) talked me into doing it in Ruby.  Great.  

I like Ruby.  The idea seems really cool.  I just DON'T UNDERSTAND IT!  I've
read the book.  I can't wait for the movie.  Anyway... I wrote a little bit
of code to read and write a user object to disk, verify passwords and such.
It works... but I had to use a Global Varible to make it work.  That MUST be
wrong.  I want the whole user thing to be encapsulated so that it gets
queried by the rest of the program.. but the rest of the program doesn't
know / care what the object is doing.  Every time I try to make it do this,
the sky falls on me.  Here is my sample code, how can I fix it to do what I
want??  I've been messing about with this for quite a while... with no luck.

Thanks!!

Mark Firestone
http://www.retrobbs.org 


class User

   def initialize(name,phone,citystate,address,password)
     @deleted = FALSE
     @locked  = TRUE
     @name   = name
     @alais    = ''
     @alaisOn = FALSE
     @phone   = phone
     @citystate = citystate
     @address  = address
     @password = password
     @width = 80
    end

 def name
   @name
 end
 
 def password
   @password
 end
 
 def show

  print "User: #@name #@phone #@citystate #@address #@password\n"
 end
 
end

class User_list

  include Enumerable 
  
  def initialize
    @users = Array.new
  end
  
  def append(aUser)
   @users.push(aUser)
   self
  end
  
  
  def [](key)
   if key.kind_of?(Integer)
      result = @users[key]
    else
     result = @users.find { |user| key == user.name }
    end
    return result 
 end
 
 end   #of Class User_list
 
  def loadusers
    File.open("users.dat") do |f|  
    $list = Marshal.load(f)  
    print "- Loading User Object...\n"
   end  
 end
 
 def saveusers
   File.open("users.dat", "w+") do |f|
   Marshal.dump($list, f)
 end
     print "- Saving User Object...\n"
end

def checkpassword (username,password)
  result = FALSE
  if $list[username] != nil
   if $list[username].password == password 
    result = TRUE
   end
  else
   print "You passed me a bad user -- ass-munch!\n"
  end
  return result
end
 
 $list = User_list.new
 #$list.append(User.new('SYSOP','000-000-0000','Tempe, AZ','600 E. Solana
Drive','STUPID'))
 #$list.append(User.new('TEST','000-000-0000','Mesa, AZ','123 Sample
Street','HAPPY'))

loadusers
 $list[0].show
 
 $list[1].show

 if $list['TEST'] != nil
  $list['TEST'].show
end

print checkpassword('SYSOP','STUPID')
print checkpassword('SYSOP2','PASSWORD')
saveusers

 

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