Would you christen your child Clarissa-MaryBelle? No, neither would I, but someone might - and there's a name that's so long it won't fit into boxes on forms.

When programming, there's a need to format things to line up, and in a ixed with font / plain text data file, that's done withspae pading - usinf the printf function, the % operator, or the .format method depending on your language. This week, I've been teaching Ruby and used the % operator therein.

Here's a first format - a fixed format using 10 character positions for the name:
  puts "A child called %-10s was born to them" % offspring

Of course, Clarissa-MaryBelle is going to stand out. Tthe "10" is a mimimum field width, so she won't be truncated though. But to get her all lined up, you can do better. A good solution is to search through all the names you need to output, and make up your format string using the longest that yu find.

The search:
  longest = 0
  family.each do |offspring|
    longest < offspring.length and longest = offspring.length
  end

and the print:
  puts "Child %2d called %#{longest}s was born to them" % [osn,offspring]
(which has an extra field too - the chld number - in the output)

Full example, including sample output, [here].
(written 2015-10-23)

 R109 - Ruby - Strings and Regular Expressions
  [970] String duplication - x in Perl, * in Python and Ruby - (2006-12-07)
  [986] puts - opposite of chomp in Ruby - (2006-12-15)
  [987] Ruby v Perl - interpollating variables - (2006-12-15)
  [1195] Regular Express Primer - (2007-05-20)
  [1305] Regular expressions made easy - building from components - (2007-08-16)
  [1588] String interpretation in Ruby - (2008-03-21)
  [1875] What are exceptions - Python based answer - (2008-11-08)
  [1887] Ruby Programming Course - Saturday and Sunday - (2008-11-16)
  [1891] Ruby to access web services - (2008-11-16)
  [2293] Regular Expressions in Ruby - (2009-07-16)
  [2295] The dog is not in trouble - (2009-07-17)
  [2608] Search and replace in Ruby - Ruby Regular Expressions - (2010-01-31)
  [2614] Neatly formatting results into a table - (2010-02-01)
  [2621] Ruby collections and strings - some new examples - (2010-02-03)
  [2623] Object Oriented Ruby - new examples - (2010-02-03)
  [2980] Ruby - examples of regular expressions, inheritance and polymorphism - (2010-10-02)
  [3424] Divide 10000 by 17. Do you get 588.235294117647, 588.24 or 588? - Ruby and PHP - (2011-09-08)
  [3621] Matching regular expressions, and substitutions, in Ruby - (2012-02-23)
  [3757] Ruby - a teaching example showing many of the language features in short but useful program - (2012-06-09)
  [3758] Ruby - standard operators are overloaded. Perl - they are not - (2012-06-09)
  [4388] Global Regular Expression matching in Ruby (using scan) - (2015-01-08)
  [4505] Regular Expressions for the petrified - in Ruby - (2015-06-03)

Back to Melksham - two small townships, or one big one?

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Build up classes into applications sharing data types in Ruby

RUby - loading, using, changing, storing JSON format data
Scenario outlines - tables of values to test - in Gherkin / Cucumber
Testing your new class - first steps with cucumber
Build up classes into applications sharing data types in Ruby
Clarrissa-Marybelle - too long to really fit?
Melksham - two small townships, or one big one?
RUH Hopper - experience and thoughts forward
Is the RUH hopper a limited, duplicate service running unnecessarily and at high cost?
Method, Class, Module, Package - how to they relate in Python?
RSpec - Ruby testing (stand alone example / no cucumber)