I have many strings following a certain pattern:
string = "Hello, @name. You did @thing." # example
Basically, my strings are a description where @word is dynamically. I need to replace each with a value at runtime.
string = "Hello, #{@name}. You did #{@thing}." # Is not an option!
The @word is basically a variable, but I just cannot use the method above. How should I do that?
Instead doing search/replace, you can use Kernel#sprintf method, or its % shorthand. Combined with Hashes, it can come pretty handy:
'Hello, %{who}. You did %{what}' % {:who => 'Sal', :what => 'wrong'}
# => "Hello, Sal. You did wrong"
The advantage of using Hash instead of Array is that you don't have to worry about the ordering, and you can have the same value inserted on multiple places in the string.
You can format your string with placeholders that can be switched out dynamically using String's % operator.
string = "Hello, %s. You did %s"
puts string % ["Tony", "something awesome"]
puts string % ["Ronald", "nothing"]
#=> 'Hello, Tony. You did something awesome'
#=> 'Hello, Ronald. You did nothing'
Possible use case: Let's say you were writing a script that would be taking the name and action in as parameters.
puts "Hello, %s. You did %s" % ARGV
Assuming 'tony' and 'nothing' were the first two parameters, you would get 'Hello, Tony. You did nothing'.
[ruby] replace string hash. The solution can be as simple (one-two inline expressions) or as complex (template library) as desired.