From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2010-12-01T01:15:59+09:00
Subject: Re: 'require' is not recognised

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Tara Keane <tararakeane@hotmail.com> wrote:
> thanks for your help - I had forgotten to include benchmark inside
> quotes so it wasn't picking it up.
> one more quick question...
>
> require'benchmark'
> iterations = 100000
> a=Benchmark.measure do
>  for i in 1..iterations do
>  x=i
>  end
> end
>
> In the above code (from Beginning Ruby book)
> what's the difference between benchmark and Benchmark(uppercase)

I recommend you read an introduction to Ruby (there are some useful
links here: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/).

When you do require 'benchmark', the require method would search for a
suitable file in the load path (benchmark.rb, benchmark.so, etc
depending on the OS). When it finds the file, it loads its contents
and execute them. In this case, the benchmark.rb file creates a
constant called Benchmark, which you can then use. It has a method
measure you can call and so on.

> Also why 2 periods 1..iterations?

a..b is a Range literal. That for syntax executes the block once for
each value between 1 and iterations. Take a look at Ranges to
understand.

By the way, I prefer to do this kind of things like this:

iterations = 100000
iterations.times do
  # your code
end

Jesus.