What does ?* mean [duplicate] - ruby-on-rails

This question already has answers here:
what is "?" in ruby
(3 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I am trying to understand what this means
variableName * ?*
I understand that VariableName is being multiplied with something, but what does ?* mean? Is this regex and does it mean that I'm appending '?' and anything that comes after it?

?c is not a regex, is the short syntax for '*'. That is, ?a is 'a', ?b is 'b' etc...
What is going on in your program is probably something like:
["ab","cd","ef"] * ?*
#=> "ab*cd*ef"

Related

Ruby: <<- operator [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
What are <-- Ruby Strings called? And how do I insert variables in them?
(3 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
I'm working on Rails. In my code base, I see a line that using Arel::SqlLiteral like this:
result = Arel::Nodes::SqlLiteral.new(<<-SQL
CASE WHEN condition1 THEN calculation1
WHEN condition2 THEN calculation2
WHEN condition3 THEN calculation3
ELSE default_calculation END
SQL)
I understand what this code piece do. The thing I don't understand is its grammar, at this point:
Arel::Nodes::SqlLiteral.new(<<-SQL
...
SQL
)
So in ruby, what is the grammar of <<- follow by name, and then at last block we call that name.
thanks
The keyword you're looking for is "Heredoc".
https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/doc/syntax/literals_rdoc.html#label-Here+Documents
It's mainly used to prettify large texts and common practice for shells/shellscripts. The marker on top indicates the beginning of a heredoc and the marker on bottom (which must not be indented unless you place a “-” before the opening marker) specifies the end.

What does "&:name" mean in Ruby [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
What does map(&:name) mean in Ruby?
(17 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
I saw it in some sample Ruby code someone had posted. It was something like:
a.sort_by(&:name)
where a is an array or ActiveRecord objects and :name is one of the attributes.
I have never seen &:name and Ruby's Symbol class documentation says nothing about it. Probably something really simple. :)
Unary Ampersand is address of a function/block/lambda
In this case, it means that the .sort_by function will use each a's element's function named name for comparison
Mostly it used for something else, like this:
[1,2,3].map{ |x| x.to_s } # ['1','2','3']
That could be shortened as:
[1,2,3].map(&:to_s)
So, in your case, a.sort_by(&:name) is a shorthand to:
a.sort_by{ |x| x.name }

Swift error: prefix/postfix '=' is reserved [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Is this response from the compiler valid?
(3 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
I am getting error message:
prefix/postfix '=' is reserved
for below simple in swift.
var c=0,a=2,b=4
c= a+b
any idea why I am getting this error?
Check this:
Is this response from the compiler valid?
Swift isn't entirely whitespace-agnostic like C... in particular, it uses whitespace to distinguish prefix from postfix operators (because ++i++ in C is a grammar oddity). But it's not ridiculously strict about whitespace like Python either.
P.S. So you have to add whitespace before =.
If I use a single space after variable "c" name, this error is get removed.
c = a+b

Erlang Tuple to String [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Convert erlang terms to string, or decode erlang binary
(2 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
Is there a way how to convert a tuple to a string ?
Consider I have the following list :
[{atom,5,program},{atom,5,receiving},{nil,5}]
I wish to convert this into the following string:
"{atom,5,program},{atom,5,receiving},{nil,5}"
I have tried using erlang:tuple_to_list on each element in the list, which returns
A = [atom,5,program]
Eventually, I can't concatenate that with "{" ++ A ++ "}"
Any ideas how I can turn that to a string ?
Term = [{atom,5,program},{atom,5,receiving},{nil,5}].
lists:flatten(io_lib:format("~p", [Term])).

Array to single string [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Array.join("\n") not the way to join with a newline?
(7 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
I'm having an issue which I can't seem to solve. I have an array which I need to convert to an single string. The elements need to be put underneath each other.
sample_array = ['a','b','c','d','e']
desired output:
sample_array = "a
b
c
d
e"
I thought I could do this with a 'heredoc', but I can only get the elements behind each other inline. This is unfortunately not what I need. Anyone who can help me?
edit for edit question
In a single line, you can use inject:
sample_array = ['a','b','c','d','e']
puts sample_array.inject(""){|conc,x| conc + "\n" + x }
=> "a b c d e"
that will fold the array recursively and adding a line between chars

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