Ruby gem - Highline and downcase?

Question

I have been searching frustratingly for hours and just can not seem to find out how to change the input from the ask function.

input = ask ("Input text: ")

If anybody can help a newbie out that would be amazing!

I've also provided a script link here to the gem below:

The ask function lets me do this with a line of string.

what does it mean changing input? and what is highline? plz add explanation and if exists, give an example - what is your desired output? — marmeladze, Feb 25 '18 at 09:08
"ask" is similar to a "gets" function in however it moves the cursor in cmd right behind the text in the "Input text" string. It is a function from Highline which is a Ruby gem i have installed. Basically i'm wanting to have my answer automatically changed to downcase as i am using whatever you type in to the field as a key to make a selection. — Kito Garlick, Feb 25 '18 at 10:06

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 25 '18 at 14:35

1

Just call downcase! (or downcase according to your sitation) on input variable.

Like this,

input = ask("Input text").downcase

Or,

input = ask("Input text")
input.downcase!
p "Downcased: #{input}"

A quick snippet for you

require 'highline'

cli = HighLine.new
input = cli.ask("Input text").downcase!
p "Downcased input: #{input}"

And execution.

$ ruby app.rb 
Input text
LoremIpsum DOlor SIt amet 
"Downcased input: loremipsum dolor sit amet"

answered Feb 25 '18 at 14:35

marmeladze

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1

I forgot to thank you for your answer! It helped a lot! – Kito Garlick Mar 21 '18 at 12:51
1

I was trying to call .downcase on the string. Like this- ask = “input: “.downcase. Not putting brackets around the sting is where I was going wrong. Thanks again! – Kito Garlick Mar 21 '18 at 12:58

Chad Chabot · Answer 2 · 2018-03-24T16:43:09.417

If you're new to Ruby and/or reading through the source to understand how a library works, don't worry, I've been there (and after ~10 years in the biz it still happens from time to time).

Depending on what you want to do, marmeladze's first answer might be what you're looking for.
I think you might be looking for something different (or someone in the future may benefit from an expanded answer), and want to change the case of the answer that Highline captures for validation.

Highline has a #change_case method that will alter the case of the answer, and may be what you're looking for.

input = ask("Do you like cupcakes?") {|q| q.case = :down}

and the result would be exactly the same as the other answer, but accomplish it in a less direct way (because you're manipulating the answer in a block).

However, if you wanted to do something a little more involved and use the change in case as part of your answer validation, then adding .downcase to the end of the ask() block isn't going to cut it.

For example, let's say you want to ask a question and check if the input was y or n. You could do something like:

input = ask("Do you like cupcakes?") do |q|
  q.case = :down
  q.in = ["y","n"]
end

That way input will contain either y or n, and accept inputs of Y, y, N, or n.
You could go even farther by making more changes to the q object (i.e. something like turning off input echo by using q.echo = false) inside the block, and use the other features that the HighLine::Question class offers.

Hi Chad, thank you for going further with explanations. Ruby is definitely starting to become a bit clearer to me each day :). I really appreciate your empathy in regards to understanding libraries. When it came to what I was wanting to achieve, simply simply putting brackets around the string followed by the .downcase method worked. — Kito Garlick, Mar 21 '18 at 12:54

Ruby gem - Highline and downcase?

2 Answers2