assigning values of array into variables in ruby-CodePudding

I am trying to assign the each value of an array into different variables. But I am getting error as "Expecting end."

strs = ["flower","flow","flight"]
strs.each_with_index do |x, i|
"b#{i}" = x
end

what is going wrong here ?

CodePudding user response：

What you're doing is like saying

"howdy" = 1

You can't say that. That expression attempts to assign into a string literal. You can't do that. A string literal is not an lvalue (a thing that can go on the left side of an equal sign).

If you are trying to say "make a variable called howdy and assign this value to it", you can't do that because local variables cannot be created on the fly. See How to dynamically create a local variable?.

However, the real core of your issue is that you should not even want to do what you're doing. You already have an array, a wonderful thing that allows you to reference each entry by number. "flower" in your code is already strs[0], and so on. The whole point of the array is that it lets you do that. There is thus no need for individual variables with number names; the array is the variable with number names.

CodePudding user response：

I'm not sure as to WHY you are attempting to create local variables when you already sort of have them. Consider the following where we simply replace your suggested b0 with b[0]:

strs = ["flower","flow","flight"]
b = strs
b[0]  #=>  "flower"

You could optionally convert your array to a hash using an approach similar to what you've already tried and replace b0 with b[0]:

b = {}
strs.each_with_index do |x, i|
  b[i] = x
end

b[0]  #=>  "flower"

Or even something like this:

my_variables = {}
strs.each_with_index do |x, i|
  my_variables[:"b#{i}"] = x
end

my_variables[:b0] #=>  "flower"