chisel up through level 2

chisel.rb

require 'pry'
class Chisel
  attr_accessor :paragraph, :header, :stars

  def initialize
    @stars = 0
  end

  def parse(text)
      stars?(text)
    if @stars > 0
       star_eval(text)
    else
      text
    end
     split_text = splitter(text)
     split_text.map do |line|
      if line.include? "#"
        @header = parse_header(line)
      else
        @paragraph = parse_paragraph(line)
      end
    end
  end

  def parse_header(text)
    hash_count = text.chars.count do |char|
       char == "#"
     end
     text.delete!("#").sub!(" ", "")
     front = "<h#{hash_count}>"
     back = "</h#{hash_count}>"
     output_line(front, text, back)
  end

  def output_line(front, text, back)
    "#{front}#{text}#{back}"
  end

  def parse_paragraph(text)
    front = "<p>\n"
    back = "\n</p>"
    output_line(front, text, back)
  end

  def splitter(text)
    text.split(/^\n/).flat_map do |line|
      if line.include?("#")
        line.split("\n")
      else
        line
      end
    end
  end

  def stars?(text)
    @stars = text.chars.count do |star|
      star == "*"
    end
  end

  def star_eval(text)
    while @stars >= 0
      if text.include?("**")
        if text.include?(" **")
          text.sub!("**", "<strong>")
          @stars -= 2
        else
          text.sub!("**", "</strong>")
          @stars -= 2
        end
      else
        if text.include?("\s*")
          text.sub!("*", "<em>")
          @stars -= 1
        else
          text.sub!("*", "</em>")
          @stars -= 1
        end
      end

      # else text.include?(" * ")
      #   "unordered list"
    end
    text
  end


end

parser = Chisel.new

#passes
#puts parser.star_eval("My *emphasized and **stronged** text* is awesome")
#passes
#puts parser.star_eval("this is a **bold** word and *italics* word")
puts parser.parse(File.read("./chisel_sample.md"))

At first blush this looks like a good working solution. I think it is really important to have working code first and pretty code second. One thing I notice is you created a method called stars?. When we create a method with a ? we want to return a boolean by convention. So the method stars?(text) should return either true or false.

The way I approach it might be like this...
You probably haven't gotten into regular expressions, but what is commonly known as regex is great for data sanitation and parsers such as this one. Regular expression allows us to find specific patterns in our text, then either modify that text or just return matches.

There is a method called scan which you can call on a string object that returns an array of arrays of matching text that follow a specific regex pattern. Here is an example of finding all words or phrases that are surrounded by two stars. http://rubular.com/r/j82JzPgTED

We might then write a method like this which we call in our parse method.

https://gist.github.com/BobGu/144030229bfc6184cb03

You could then use this similar pattern for * after you've parsed for ** so you don't get any pattern matching collisions.