From: "Jan E." <lists@...>
Date: 2012-03-25T22:11:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Array handling trouble for new guy

Hi,

Your methods first_names, middle_names etc. don't make sense. Every time 
you call them, the corresponding instance variable will be overwritten 
with an empty array. The current content gets lost. This may even happen 
after you created the object, since all three methods are public.

I don't even understand what they're meant for. Why not simply 
initialize the variables @first_names, @second_names etc. with empty 
arrays and fill them directly by @first_names.push ... ?

There are some other issues in your code:

- You shouldn't put space between a method name and the parenthesized 
arguments. While this does seem to work in method definitions, it will 
fail when calling the method. For example, you cannot write

print (1, 2)

- Don't use single backslashes in strings. They're meta characters for 
escaping, so you cannot rely on them being put into the string 
literally. Instead, use double backslashes or slashes (this works in 
Windows, too: 'c:/ruby/data.txt')

- When you read from a file, you don't have to convert the input into 
strings. The input is a string already.

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