4 items tagged “Ruby”
2025
💡 TIL: Ruby’s clamp method reduces conditionals #
You can constrain a variable to be within a range using clamp:
5.clamp(1, 10) # => 5 -3.clamp(1, 10) # => 1 15.clamp(1, 10) # => 10
💡 TIL: Regex within string square brackets #
I’ve always known that Ruby supports ranges within a string’s square brackets. So in addition to the simple `name[4]` I can do `name[2..4]` and `name[2...]` and `name[-1]`. But I just learned you can put regex in the square brackets for more dynamic substring selectors: `“me+abc123@email.com”[/.+\+(.+)@(.+)/, 2]` will give you the subdomain of the email address. It even works with named capture groups! `“123.45”[/(?<dollars>\d+)\.(?<centers>\d+)/, :dollars]` will give you the dollars. The article has a few other notable examples.
2024
📝 Ruby Sorbet is too verbose, can the syntax be improved? #
Awhile back when I was ramping up on Typescript, I was leaning into the benefits of types. In the Ruby world, Sorbet is the most common way to add types so I gave that a shot. In the end, I ripped it out. I spent more time wrangling type checking then the time it spent catching bugs, and one of the issues was the verbose syntax. But recently I came up with a novel solution to this problem. First, here is the verbose syntax — you end up declaring all your arguments twice:
sig { params(name: T.untyped, nickname: String).returns(Integer) }
def greet(name, nickname)
puts "Hello, #{name}! Your nickname: #{nickname}"
name.length
end
💡 TIL: Ruby can chain methods and right-assign #
I just learned that ruby supports re-writing this:
total = plus_shipping(with_taxes(subtotal(items)))
As:
subtotal(items).then { |subtotal| with_taxes(subtotal) }.then { |total| plus_shipping(total) } => total
from davetron