From: "Guy N. Hurst" <gnhurst@...>
Date: 2000-12-20T16:22:38+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7750] Re: Code sample for improvement

Stephen White wrote:
> 
> During an idle chat with someone on IRC, they presented some fairly
> nasty code for printing a time interval in English. I cleaned it up
> a bit and converted it to Ruby.
> 
<snip code>
> 
> Example run:
> 
>   [steve@localhost steve]$ ./a 10000
>   2 hours 46 mins 40 secs
> 
> I was interested in how the new constructs available in Ruby, like
> closures and co-routines, could help clean up what really is pretty
> ghastly code.
> 
> I've played around with a few other approaches, but nothing really
> seems to stand out as being a better way of doing things.
> 

I looked at the other samples and decided to give this a try.
I figured there might be a nice way to use the Time class for this.
Besides, there aren't 30 days in every month ;-)

In making this code, I am taking advantage of the fact that the English
words, including your accepted abbreviations "min" and "sec", match the 
methods I will use from the Time class, which I use as my workhorse. 
No tables are needed. Since this seems like a useful method,
I added it into the String and Integer classes.  


interv.rb========
class String
  def plural(q)
    if q==1 then self else self+"s" end
  end
  def to_time
    parts=%w(year month day hour min sec)
    tc = Time.mktime(1970,1,1,0,0,0)
    tn = Time.at(self.to_i + tc.to_i) 
    s = ""
    parts.each {|part|
        q=tn.send(part)-tc.send(part);  
        s += q.to_s + " " + part.plural(q) + " " unless q<1
    }
    s.chop
  end
end

class Integer
  def to_time
    self.to_s.to_time
  end
end

==================

require 'interv.rb'
time = ARGV[0] || (print "Interval: "; gets)
puts time.to_time      

puts 10000.to_time	   # 2 hours 46 mins 40 secs
puts "10000".to_time       # 2 hours 46 mins 40 secs
puts "four".to_time        # ""
puts 0x6f.to_time          # 1 min 51 secs

Personally, I think this better reflects the Ruby way to do things.

I really like Ruby  :-)


Guy N. Hurst

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