From: Stephen White <steve@...>
Date: 2000-12-20T05:16:32+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7711] Re: Code sample for improvement

On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Stephen White wrote:

> I've played around with a few other approaches, but nothing really
> seems to stand out as being a better way of doing things.

Here's my next iteration:

  #! /usr/bin/env ruby
  # Given the number of seconds, convert to English description

  table = [ [ 31557816, 'year',  'years'  ],
            [  2629818, 'month', 'months' ],
            [    86400, 'day',   'days'   ],
            [     3600, 'hour',  'hours'  ],
            [       60, 'min',   'mins'   ],
            [        1, 'sec',   'secs'   ] ]

  result = ""

  time   = ARGV[0].to_i
  table.each {|unit, sing, plur|
    size = time / unit
    if size > 0
      result += (size == 1) ? "#{size} #{sing} " : "#{size} #{plur} "
    end
    time %= unit
  }

  puts result

This improves the way the code is structured and takes advantage of
a few more Ruby features. Any more Ruby features that could make this
code nicer? Maybe generalise the code and put it into a class?

-- 
  steve@deaf.org