From: Eric Christopherson <echristopherson@...>
Date: 2011-07-27T08:13:06+09:00
Subject: Re: How do I pass a variable to the Chroinc library function?

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Terry Improv_coder <tpensel@pobox.com> wrote:
> require 'chronic'
>
> puts "Enter the day of the week, and the date will be displayed "
>
> inputday = gets.downcase.chomp!
>
> # User enters
> #    monday
>
>
> nextdate = Chronic.parse('next inputday')

This sends it the exact string 'next inputday', when what you want to
do is make a string from 'next ' + the contents of inputday. There are
several ways to do that:

# String interpolation (requires double quotes)
nextdate = Chronic.parse("next #{inputday}")

# String concatenation (single or double quotes)
nextdate = Chronic.parse('next ' + inputday)
nextdate = Chronic.parse("next " + inputday)

etc.

>
>
> puts "The next", inputday, "is "
>
> puts nextdate
>
> exit
>
> *******************************
>
>
> I have tried every $, @ , @@ and single quotes and double quote
> combinations I can think of.

It sounds like you need to review the differences between global ($),
instance (@), and class (@@) variables, on the one hand; and local
variables. inputday is a local variable, since it doesn't start with a
distinguishing symbol; $inputday, @inputday, and @@inputday would all
be different.

> I can use the Time.now with offsets to get
> the result I
> need
> But I am interested in having the 'next inputday' arguments evaluated
> before Chronic uses them.  I tried the eval command, but that did not
> work.
>
> Any ideas, thanks in advance.
>
> Kindly
>
> taz-uker