CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyif-statementhash
Alex Marvick
Alex Marvick

Reputation: 142

If/else statement via hash (Ruby)

I've created a hash (still relatively new with this concept) for a contact list where the keys are the names and the values are the phone numbers (both strings). The user is asked to take an action; here is one where you search a user's full name:

print "Search Name: "
name_search = gets.chomp

contact_book.each { |name, number| puts "The name entered corresponds to the following phone number: #{number}\n" if name.upcase == name_search.upcase }

I want to put an else statement that will notify the user if the input does not match up with any of the keys when looping through the hash, but was not able to figure out a way.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1075

Answers (3)

Jon Malachowski
Jon Malachowski

Reputation: 256

The other answers look like they will work, but seem quite verbose for what you are trying to accomplish. I guess it is only style preference, but for efficiency: If I want to see if a hash has a key I would do it like this in one line.

phone_num = contact_book[ name_key ]
puts ( phone_num ) ? "#{name_key}'s phone number is #{phone_num}" : "#{name_key} not found"

I notices someone trying to re-case everything everytime. For efficiency you would normally do this once on storing the name, not NxM times one searching for it.

Upvotes: 0

slowjack2k
slowjack2k

Reputation: 2586

Within a Hash you can lookup a key like this:

# convert all keys to upcase
contact_book_lookup = {}
hash.each_with_object(contact_book_lookup){ |(k, v), tmp_h| tmp_h[k.upcase] = v }

search_key = name_search.upcase
if contact_book_lookup.has_key? search_key 
  puts "The name entered corresponds to the following phone number:   #{contact_book_lookup[search_key]}\n"
else
  puts "The name entered has no matches\" 
end

Upvotes: 1

Ursus
Ursus

Reputation: 30056

You can use Enumerable#select and manage the array returned

matched_names = contact_book.select { |name, number| name.upcase == name_search.upcase }
if matched_names.any?
   puts "The name entered corresponds to the following phone number: #{matched_names.first.last}\n"
else
   puts "The name entered has no matches\"
end

Note that this highlights the fact that you could have more than one entry with the same name maybe.

Upvotes: 2

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