From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2003-03-12T11:31:10+09:00
Subject: Re: How to add a destructive method to the String class...

Jeremy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just started learning Ruby this weekend, and I have to say that I've
> fallen in love with it so far.  It's a beautiful beautiful language.  =0)

It only gets better as you learn and use it :)

> In messing around with it, I found that I needed a method that capitalizes
> all the words in a string, assuming that each word is seperated by a space. 
> I did this, and it works fine:
> 
> class String
>     def capwords
>         self.split.each { |word| word.capitalize! }.join(" ")
>     end
> end
> 
> It does what I need, but it got me thinking.  How would I make this
> destructive?  In other words, rather than having to do an assingment like
> this:
> 
> title = "This is the title"
> 
> title = title.capwords
> 
> I'd like to do this instesad:
> 
> title.capwords!

You gotta use destructive methods to write a destrucive method. Not 
fully tested...

irb(main):001:0> string = "this is the string"
"this is the string"
irb(main):002:0> class String; def capwords!; gsub!(/\b[a-z]/) {|ltr| 
ltr.upcase }; end; end
nil
irb(main):003:0> string.capwords!
"This Is The String"