Ruby Lesson 1 Project: Putting the Form in Formmatter

With the exception of Lesson 8, which is dubbed a challenge instead of of a course like the others, each lesson has a project to complete. These projects seem to incorporate much of what is learned throughout the lesson and add some new material as well. The posts on these projects will simply be about the new material presented. 

Materials Presented 

• Prompting the User
• gets 
• .chomp
• .capitalize
• "!" 
• "#{}" String Interpolation 

When looking for user input we would usually ask a questions like "How old are you?" or "What's your favorite color?" To display these questions we would input commands like the "puts" and "print". 

Examples: 

1. puts "What is your name?"
2. print "What is your favorite color?" 

Now we will have to set a variable for the answer to these questions by a method a called "gets". (Notice that there's no period in front of this method, this probably means methods can contain different symbols, characters, numbers, and mabye even spaces.) Using a "gets" prompts the user to input a response and creates a blank line after it, the same as a "puts" command does. 

".chomp" is a method that erases extra line that is created by "gets". During some testing it looks like this only works with "gets" and not with "puts".Example: 

1. Input: puts "What is your name?"
             my_name = gets.chomp
        
   Output: What is your name?
                (asks for input here)
   
   Once input is entered: (name entered)

".capitalize" is a nifty method similiar to ".upcase" and ".downcase". The ".capitalize" method makes the first letter of a string uppercase and lowercases every letter after the first. 

The thing about ".capitlize" is that it doesn't replace the original string. Ruby makes a copy of what was suppose to be outputted, capitilizes it, and then outputs the capitalized string. Adding "!" to the end of ".capitalize" will replace the original string and only keep the capitalized version.

Example: 

1. Input: print "dAVID".capitalize
   
   Ruby: dAVID
              David
   
   Output: David
2. Input: print "dAVID".capitalize!
   
   Ruby: dAVID
              David
              deletes dAVID (this is how I imagine the process to be)
   
   Output: David

I don't really know what the point of getting rid of the extra line of code is, it doesn't seem to affect the output. My best guess is that in a larger program or website with millions of users those extra lines would add up quite fast and would slow down system. 

"#{}" is call string interpolation. If you write a set variable inside the brackets "{}" then it will output whatever the variable was set to when using either the "print" or "puts" command. 

Example:

1. Input: my_name = "David"
             print "#{my_name}"
   
   Output: David

Project 

All the following inputs will give you the same output. 

INPUTS 

OUTPUT

/end of first project =)