CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyinputterminalgets
kortes
kortes

Reputation: 33

Ruby: 'gets' method called inside a method saves Nil instead of Input

Ok guys, this in a Dungeon Text Adventure project that runs on terminal.

When user says he wants to "go north" it splits the string: first word checks for method and second word for parameter. That happens someplace else, i copy pasted the 2 methods that are giving me the following problem:

When it calls go(north) and north isn't a valid connection, it shows the options and asks user for direction again, the input the user enters at that moment is stored as Nil for some reason.

Why?? I also tried STDIN.gets.chomp.downcase! and had same Nil results

Here's the code:

    def find_room_in_direction(direction)

##-> if room connects with other on that direction, returns connection

        if find_room_in_dungeon(@player.location).connections.include?(direction.to_sym)
            return find_room_in_dungeon(@player.location).connections[direction.to_sym]

##-> if direction connection is not found, 
##-> show possible connections & return trigger to ask again inside go()

         elsif !find_room_in_dungeon(@player.location).connections.include?(direction.to_sym)
             puts "I don't see any #{direction}..."
             puts "This room only connects #{(find_room_in_dungeon(@player.location)).connections.keys.join(', ')}"
             puts "Where should we go?"

             return :redo
         end
         end


    def go(direction)

        current_direction = @player.location
        new_direction = find_room_in_direction(direction)

##-> if REDO trigger received, ask for new direction & try again

        if new_direction == :redo
            puts "REDOING DIRECTION"

    ##-> HERE IS THE PROBLEM:
    ##-> this does ask for input

            new_direction = gets.chomp.downcase!

##-> but it saves Nil instead of the input, so that puts shows ''

            puts "#{new_direction}"

##-> so this call trows an error: cant call method to Nil

            new_direction = find_room_in_direction(new_direction)

##-> if user entered valid direction from start, the following would run 

        elsif new_direction != :redo && current_direction != new_direction
            @player.location = new_direction
            puts "You go #{direction},"
            puts "and enter #{show_current_description}"
        end
        end

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 322

Answers (2)

s-ol
s-ol

Reputation: 1754

You are using downcase! instead of downcase. downcase! changes a string in-place and returns nil if there were no changes (which is what is happening here).

str = "teSt"
puts str.downcase # test
puts str # teSt
str.downcase! 
puts str # test

See the documentation for downcase!

Upvotes: 5

iced
iced

Reputation: 1582

Just bang chomp. As for downcase there are two variants - chomp and chomp!

Upvotes: 0

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