From: Lyle Johnson <lyle@...>
Date: 2004-01-27T01:34:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Print empty values to a file?

Qubert wrote:

> So I am trying to figure out a cleaver means to check if each value
> exists or nil then 'puts "nil"' so there are no more blanks.
> I can do this the brute force method, with if/then statements
> everywhere, but I was wondering if there is a Ruby way to accomplish
> this.

OK, this is very evil, but you could redefine the to_s() method for 
NilClass at the top of your script, e.g.

     class NilClass
       def to_s
         "nil"
       end
     end

Now when you do a puts() on nil, it will print the literal string "nil" 
instead of the empty string.

Hope this helps,

Lyle