Brian's Ruby Tuesday: Examples of Case

case.rb

# case is a multi-way decision statement similar to if/elsif/else
# here's a bit longer and more thorough discussion: http://www.skorks.com/2009/08/how-a-ruby-case-statement-works-and-what-you-can-do-with-it/


# a simple example of case
case title
when 'War and Peace'
  puts 'Tolstoy'
when 'Romeo and Juliet'
  puts 'Shakespeare'
else
  puts "Don't know"
end

# this uses case to assign the value of a variable
author = case title
         when 'War and Peace'
           'Tolstoy'
         when 'Romeo and Juliet'
           'Shakespeare'
         else
           "Don't know"
         end
         
# a more compact version, this is probably better code from a readability standpoint.
# Don't compact methods if it make the code more difficult to read!
# Definitely compact methods if it improves readability, as in this example.
author = case title
         when 'War and Peace' then 'Tolstoy'
         when 'Romeo and Juliet' then 'Shakespeare'
         else "Don't know"
         end

# the following returns nil if no value matches, remember nearly everything in Ruby returns a value!
author = case title
         when 'War and Peace' then 'Tolstoy'
         when 'Romeo and Juliet' then 'Shakespeare'
         end