Formatting stdout output

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February 21st, 2011, 10:12 AM

radon7

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Formatting stdout output

I am new to Ruby and ran into a small problem. Everything I find on formatting is for strings or such. I am trying to output a hash as a table to the shell. I'm thinking like 5 key and value pairs per line. I would prefer it to increase going down rather than left to right but either would work. The best example I have is the way 'ls' on linux will list the files in a dir. That is an array rather than a hash though.

Here is the function and x is the hash on input

def output(x)
x.sort.map.each do |key, val|
print ' ___ '+key.to_s+' = '+val.to_s
end
puts
end

This displays one long row rather than splitting it up. And putting 'puts' instead makes 1 long column.

I appreciate any help I can get. Every thing I have tried has been helpless.

Radon

February 21st, 2011, 11:32 AM

L7Sqr

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Well, its going to be difficult unless all of your data is the same exact size. Do you expect all of the '=' characters to line up nicely in your output? Do you need the exact number of columns on each line (like ls will do for you)?

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February 21st, 2011, 12:14 PM

radon7

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Quote:

Originally Posted by L7Sqr

It would be nice if all the '=' lined up nicely but it wouldn't have to. I just mainly don't want the (key, val) pair split at the end of the shell line or one real long column. I am runnin some hashes through the function that has only like 6 pairs but others have a hundred or so.

This is what i have in mind
a=1 e=4 h=7 k=10
b=2 f=5 i=8
c=3 g=6 j=9

or if need be
a=1 b=2 c=3 d=4
e=5 f=6 g=7 h=8
i=9 j=10

I know is some languages you can make a table from an array but I don't know about a hash. I know you can flatten it down into an array. What I was thinking was like flattening the hash to an array then combine every two into a string like 'a=1' by joining with a '=' then putting it into another array of the strings so you could just iterate over it every nth time and printing n strings on each line.

I am to the point though anything that will be readable would be ok for now.

Thanks for any help
Radon

February 21st, 2011, 07:44 PM

L7Sqr

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The following code will accept the hash and format it into strings of key/value pairs (joined with '=') and print out to a particular width. The width will be exceeded it the key/value pair is greater than the overall width and the the '=' are not aligned. You can work that in if you'd like. Below are sample runs.

Code:

ruby

def format(hsh,width=80)
    used = 0
    hsh.collect { |k,v| [k,v].join "=" }.each do |str|
        if used > 0 and used + str.size >= width
            puts
            used = 0
        end
        print "#{str} "
        used += str.size + 1
    end
    puts
end

Code:

# format h
yetmore=yousay somekey=somevalue 1=2 3=45500034 anotherkey=anothervalue 
332435=1123243

Code:

 # format h, 20
yetmore=yousay 
somekey=somevalue 
1=2 3=45500034 
anotherkey=anothervalue 
332435=1123243

February 23rd, 2011, 11:22 AM

radon7

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Thanks A LOT. That will work just fine to get me started

June 11th, 2011, 01:16 AM

azhagu

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ruby tutorials

Quote:

Originally Posted by L7Sqr

Code:

ruby

def format(hsh,width=80)
    used = 0
    hsh.collect { |k,v| [k,v].join "=" }.each do |str|
        if used > 0 and used + str.size >= width
            puts
            used = 0
        end
        print "#{str} "
        used += str.size + 1
    end
    puts
end

Code:

# format h
yetmore=yousay somekey=somevalue 1=2 3=45500034 anotherkey=anothervalue 
332435=1123243

Code:

 # format h, 20
yetmore=yousay 
somekey=somevalue 
1=2 3=45500034 
anotherkey=anothervalue 
332435=1123243

See this Ruby Tutorials
http://techpdf.co.cc/blog/rubby/

Formatting stdout output

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