My question is about how to convert array elements to string in ruby 1.9 without getting the brackets and quotation marks. I've got an array (DB extract), from which I want to use to create a periodic report.
myArray = ["Apple", "Pear", "Banana", "2", "15", "12"]
In ruby 1.8 I had the following line
reportStr = "In the first quarter we sold " + myArray[3].to_s + " " + myArray[0].to_s + "(s)."
puts reportStr
Which produced the (wanted) output
In the first quarter we sold 2 Apple(s).
The same two lines in ruby 1.9 produce (not wanted)
In the first quarter we sold ["2"] ["Apple"] (s).
After reading in the documentation Ruby 1.9.3 doc#Array#slice I thought I could produce code like
reportStr = "In the first quarter we sold " + myArray[3] + " " + myArray[0] + "(s)."
puts reportStr
which returns a runtime error
/home/test/example.rb:450:in `+': can't convert Array into String (TypeError)
My current solution is to remove brackets and quotation marks with a temporary string, like
tempStr0 = myArray[0].to_s
myLength = tempStr0.length
tempStr0 = tempStr0[2..myLength-3]
tempStr3 = myArray[3].to_s
myLength = tempStr3.length
tempStr3 = tempStr3[2..myLength-3]
reportStr = "In the first quarter we sold " + tempStr3 + " " + tempStr0 + "(s)."
puts reportStr
which in general works.
However, what would be a more elegant "ruby" way how to do that?
Use interpolation instead of concatenation:
reportStr = "In the first quarter we sold #{myArray[3]} #{myArray[0]}(s)."
It's more idiomatic, more efficient, requires less typing and automatically calls to_s for you.