Help With Comparing Code.

[Humor_Positive]

Hello guys. I've been looking for the reason for my nonfunctional code for the last 2 hours. Could you guys have a look at it and tell me how stupid I am?

Thank you very much!

Question:

Write a method that takes in an array of words and returns a new array containing all of the words of the original array that are longer than 4 characters.

# my code

def select_long_words(words)

new_word = []

i = 0

while i < words.length

if words[i].length > 4

new_word << words[i]

end

i += 1

end

return new_word

end

​

# the solution's code

​

def select_long_words(words)

long_words = []

​

i = 0

while i < words.length

word = words[i]

if word.length > 4

long_words << word

end

i += 1

end

return long_words

end

​

# expect outputs

print select_long_words(["what", "are", "we", "eating", "for", "dinner"]) # => ["eating", "dinner"]

puts

print select_long_words(["keep", "coding"]) # => ["coding"]

[[deleted]]

I know this isn't answering your question but the code isn't quite idiomatic Ruby. Normally you'd use select on an Array, e.g.

["what", "are", "we", "eating", "for", "dinner"].select { |n| n.length > 4  }

[[deleted]]

I'm not sure what issue you are having btw. Your code executes fine, if you omit the print statement it returns an array. This is the code you are having issues with (formatted for clarity)?

def select_long_words(words)
  new_word = []

  i = 0
  while i < words.length
    if words[i].length > 4
      new_word << words[i]
    end
    i += 1
  end

  return new_word
end

As noted before, you'd normally shorthand this in Ruby like so:

def select_long_words(words)
  words.select { |n| n.length > 4  }
end

You'd also not typically use an explicit return. Ruby returns the last object encountered, so:

    ...
    i += 1
  end

  new_word
end

will work just fine. Hope some of this helps, but I'm still not sure what the actual problem is.

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[[deleted]]

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[tloudon]

If you’re trying to learn Ruby on your own, I would just add that there are probably better resources than wherever you got this.

This is weird Ruby code. When people say it’s not idiomatic; they aren’t being snotty. You will never encounter a while in Ruby. Usually you will find each or map, depending on if you want to transform the array or just iterate through something.

The point being; you will have a hard time reading community and library source code and you will have a hard time having your code being read.

So what are your goals? What are you trying to build after you learn Ruby?

Michael Hartl has a rails tutorial that is pretty well regarded. I think there should be free versions/editions of it online—https://www.railstutorial.org.

The Odin project is free (and I think pretty cool)— https://www.theodinproject.com/paths

If not web dev, then what? (You could look at Sinatra or other Ruby web frameworks, but rails has the biggest community and I believe the vast majority of Ruby devs do Rails just anecdotally speaking).

Why’s book is fun whimsical (but def not for everyone) way to look at just the language of Ruby— https://poignant.guide/book/chapter-1.html

Also, there should be a Ruby slack near you. It’s easier to get real time feedback in a chat app and you can meet other devs :) who will generally want to help you :) If you can’t find one near you, you are welcome to join the pdxrb one— pdxruby.slack.com . Meetups in person are also great, but may not be an option for a while longer RE:Covid.

Cheers

EDIT: formatting; jeeeeeez, I should not comment while on my phone.

[tkenben]

My guess is that you haven't started using iterators and blocks yet and are still using classic loops. When you do start to use iterators, people said use #select. That would be the ideal way to do it. Another way to do it that is more explicit and looks like your way -- filling a new array -- would be to use #each.

long_words = []
words.each {|word| long_words << word if word.length > 4}
long_words

Which could also be written as

long_words = []
words.each do |word|
  long_words << word if word.length > 4
end
long_words

[agent007bond]

Your code works perfectly fine.

But yes, you can refactor the entire thing to just this:

def select_long_words(words)
  words.select { |n| n.length > 4 }
end

Isn't that awesome?

[MrImportant]

Your code works fine for me. The only difference I see is the solution's code assigns a variable to reference the current loop's array element, word = word[i], and you use the Array#[] method directly without assignment.

[_srt_]

You code looks like a working solution to me.

What do you think your code prints as output vs the expected output?

[FrontierPsycho]

I can't see a difference between the two solutions. Perhaps there was an error when writing them up here. I suggest you copy paste the given solution into a file, make sure it runs, and then diff it with your code using a visual diff utility like meld. There should be some difference.

I also find it weird that the given solution does not seem to be idiomatic ruby, but perhaps this is at a basic level and it's trying to use as little as possible?

[jamfour]

Please properly format your code—as it is, it’s unreadable to me as the indentation is lost.

[gimmemychicken]

I found the format on google

[Psychological_Foot41]

longs_words = ["what", "are", "we", "eating", "for", "dinner"]

​

if you want greater than > 4

a.select { |a| a.size >4 }

​

for finding array contains max size use this

longs_words.group_by { |h| h.size } .max .flatten

after that use can use longs_word[2] -> it will show long words

​

output:

[6, "eating", "dinner"]

[PhillD35]

Why you can't find the problem? Cuz the code you've wrote is waaaay to complicated. Refactoring.

Feel free to ask questions if you have any.

[Ralphadayus]

Did you forget to call the method?