An example of Literate Chaining Style in Ruby. The Kernel#c method is a pass through that serves as a placeholder for a comment and a convenient place for tracing.

gistfile1.rb

# Accepts program file names on the command line and renders
# their text to stdout as a sequence of spoken words

token_map = {
  "[" => "left square-bracket",
  "]" => "right square-bracket",
  "!" => "exclamation-point",
  "\\" => "back slash",
  "#" => "pound sign",
  "\"" => "double-quote",
  "$" => "dollar sign",
  "%" => "percent sign",
  "&" => "ampersand",
  "'" => "single-quote",
  "(" => "left-paren",
  ")" => "right-paren",
  "*" => "star",
  "+" => "plus sign",
  "," => "comma",
  "." => "dot",
  "/" => "forward-slash",
  ":" => "colon",
  ";" => "semicolon",
  "<" => "less-than sign",
  "=" => "equals sign",
  ">" => "greater-than sign",
  "?" => "question mark",
  "@" => "at sign",
  "^" => "caret",
  "_" => "underscore",
  "`" => "back tic",
  "{" => "left curly-brace",
  "|" => "vertical bar",
  "}" => "right curly-brace",
  "~" => "tilde",
  "-" => "dash",
  " " => "space",
  "\n" => "new-line",
  "\t" => "tab",
}


module Kernel; def c text; self; end; end


puts ARGF.c("all files as text")               .read
         .c("idents, nums, and single chars")  .scan(/\w+|\W/)
         .c("adding line numbers")             .zip((0...Float::INFINITY))
         .c("formatting")                      .map {|token,line_no| "#{line_no}: #{token_map[token] || token}" }