##Learning About Variable Scope
###Hardcore Parcour
After going through three tutorial books on Ruby, Sinatra, and Ruby on Rails (one each respectively) I still struggled with my first kata from Code Wars. Code Wars (give a brief description)
The name of the kata is Stringy Strings and it has very straightforward instructions;
write me a function stringy that takes a size and returns a string of alternating '1s' and '0s'.
the string should start with a 1.
a string with size 6 should return :'101010'.
with size 4 should return : '1010'.
with size 12 should return : '101010101010'.
The size will always be positive and will only use whole numbers
I have to admit, I was at quite a loss - something that made me uncomfortable.
You're given the following:
def stringy(size) #insert your code here end
I first thought about how to approach the problem in the most simple way possible. How could I break it down to the string starting at one?
my first thought was to start at: '''base = "1"''' and go from there. I recalled the first method I internalized;
(1..size).each do |number|
because size is within the parenthesis, Ruby knows that size is going to be a variable for a number. The "number" put into "| |" symbology is giving a variable name to what is inside the parenthesis. I figured that for every other number I would want a "1" and then a "0" so with this dichotomy I figured I could equate it to even and odds. For every odd I would assign a "1" value and for every even I would assign a "0" value. Mind you, I was writing anything that came to mind and erasing and cleaning up things as I went. At this point I removed the base = "1" since I would be no longer needing it if my (array?) started at 1 and I could assign a "1" on the 1 value.
after running a few tests, I came up with the following:
def stringy(size)
(1..size).each do |number|
if number.odd?
puts "1"
else
puts "0"
end
end
end
puts stringy(5)
This did not work quite how I wanted it to:
1 0 1 0 1 1..5
First of all, what was with the 1..5? I was confused and so I asked a friend. Ruby, when not given a specific task, will regurgitate as much as she can, trying to give you as much information as possible unless specified otherwise. Since nothing was specified between the end of the if else and the end of the def function, then Ruby told you the parameters of what she did was between 1 and 5, hence the 1..5. Another thing to note is that Ruby gave us the 1's and 0's we were looking for, but not in a consecutive line.