Types and Conversions

Ref. WGR Chapter 7, Built-in essentials

Built-in Types

• Numbers
  • 42
• Booleans
  • true
  • false
• Strings
  • "apple"
  • 'banana'
• Symbols
  • :apple
• Arrays
  • ["apple", "banana"]
• Hashes
  • {:apple => 'red', :banana => 'yellow'}
• Ranges
  • (1..10)

to_x

• to_i converts to integer
• to_f converts to float
• to_s converts to string
• to_a converts to array
• to_sym converts to symbol

to_s

• it's tempting to use to_s in your UI
• usually to_s is insufficient and therefore useless
• make a custom named method instead for your purposes
  • e.g. display_name

inspect

• inspect produces a debug-ready representation of the object
• usually contains lots of information
• not to be shown to users, but good in log files or console
• a better way to debug: the "d" method
  • http://github.com/sconover/wrong