gematria.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
 
# generate a growing value for each letter (in this case its place in the alphabet, e.g. j == 9)
# for each character in the string take the index position of the character (where it is in the
# string) and save that value + 1 with the character.  Indexes always start w/ zero, that's why
# we need to add 1.  `map` means for each value we produce, save them all and return them together.
letters_with_numeric_values = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'.chars.each_with_index.map do |letter, i|
 [letter, i+1]
end
 
 
# last step we generated an array of arrays, this makes it a hash for convenience.  Arrays are
# collections of values, hashes are collections of keys AND values, so they are easier to
# reference the number by the letter.
#
# previously:
# [
#   [a, 1],
#   [b, 2],
#   [c, 3],
#   ...
# ]
#
# afterwards:
# {
#   a: 3,
#   b: 4,
#   c: 5,
#   ...
# }
lookup_hash = Hash[letters_with_numeric_values]
 
# ARGV contains whatever argument you pass to the script, so the word we are passing in.
# downcase means we want all letters in their lowercase style, to standardize.
word = ARGV.first.downcase
 
# iterate over each character in the word, look up its value in the lookup_hash, and sum them
total = 0
word.chars.each do |character|
  total = total + lookup_hash[character]
end

# print it.  `to_s` converts an integer to a string to print it correctly.
puts "total: " + total.to_s
 
 

gistfile1.sh

~$ ./gematria.rb abc
total: 6

~$ ./gematria.rb seth
total: 52

~$ ./gematria.rb s
total: 19

~$ ./gematria.rb e
total: 5

~$ ./gematria.rb t
total: 20

~$ ./gematria.rb h
total: 8