Obfuscate words and report frequency

obfuscate.rb

# If this were for purposes of cleaning out
# offensive words it would be easier to just use gsub
# but in this case we want to preserve things like "bigger"
# when searching for "big"

# also the challenge was using an array as the second argument
# where this takes an unlimited number of params. Each param passed
# after the first is a string we want to obfuscate

# Alternative solution below that allows the words param to be
# an array or a string. If passing words in string form
# they should be space seperated.

# Replace words = words.to_a
# with words = words.split(' ') if !words.is_a?(Array)
# Remove the * from the words param

def obfuscate(phrase = '', *words)
  words = words.to_a
  phrase = phrase.split(' ')
  words.each do |word|
    phrase.collect {|item| item.replace('*' * item.length) if item.downcase == word.downcase}
  end
  phrase.join(" ")
end

def report(phrase = '', *words)
  words = words.to_a
  phrase = phrase.split(' ')
  matches = []
  occurrences = Hash.new(0)

  words.each do |word|
    phrase.collect {|item| matches << item if item.downcase == word.downcase}
  end

  matches.each do |match|
    occurrences[match.downcase] += 1
  end
  occurrences
end

tc-obfuscate.rb

require 'test/unit'
require './obfuscate.rb'

class TestObfuscate < Test::Unit::TestCase

  @@string1 = 'big string of big words is bigger'
  @@result1 = '*** string of *** ***** is bigger'
  @@result1_hash = { 'big' => 2, 'words' => 1 }

  @@string2 = 'This is a comment from an asshole that likes to say fuck a lot. Go FUCK yourself'
  @@result2 = 'This is a comment from an ******* that likes to say **** a lot. Go **** yourself'
  @@result2_hash = { 'fuck' => 2, 'asshole' => 1 }

  def test_obfuscate
    assert_equal(@@result1, obfuscate(@@string1, 'big', 'words'))
    assert_equal(@@result2, obfuscate(@@string2, 'fuck', 'asshole'))
  end

  def test_report
    assert_equal(@@result1_hash, report(@@string1, 'big', 'words'))
    assert_equal(@@result2_hash, report(@@string2, 'fuck', 'asshole'))
  end

end