Fixing _why's Evil Idea Encoder

README

Fixing _why's Evil Idea Encoder
==============================

Working my way through _why's (poignant) guide to ruby, I noticed that
the more complex his examples became, the less often they actually
worked when tested. Frustrated by my inability to copy and paste examples
into the shell and see them work without doing any real learning, I
grudgingly decided to find a way to bring his examples to life and satisfy
my obsessive need for results and tidiness.

This fix deals with the wordlist.rb, encode.rb and decode.rb scripts
found in Section 3 (Chaining Delusions Together)
of Chapter 4 (Floating Little Leaves of Code)
of why's (poignant) guide to ruby.

Read the chapter here:
http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-4.html


There are two problems with these scripts:
------------------------------------------

(1) Ruby's 'require' method can't find wordlist.rb and returns the following error:

 <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require':
 no such file to load -- wordlist (LoadError)
 from <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require'
 from encode.rb:1:in `<main>'

Ruby can't find wordlist.rb because it's not looking in the local directory.
The solution I found was to include the following line
at the top of both encode.rb and decode.rb:

 $:.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__)

This ensures that the 'require' method checks
the local directory for files to include.

Source:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1061121/ruby-unable-to-use-require

(2) Once the first problem is fixed, we get another error:

 encode.rb:7:in `<main>':
 undefined local variable or method `code_words' for main:Object (NameError)

In this instance, the variable we need is undefined because you can't
import a local variable from an external source. There are three possible
solutions: make code_words either a constant, a global variable or an
object with a new user-defined class. For simplicity's sake I went with
a global variable by changing each instance of code_words to $code_words.

Source:
http://www.falsepositives.com/index.php/2005/09/12/getting-rubys-require-to-work-in-the-poignant-guide-to-ruby/

That's it! You can now encode and decode evil ideas about
starmonkeys and Nigeria and catapults to your heart's content.

Thanks to _why for his legacy, his lunacy, and his mysterious disappearance.

Put the kabosh on @n8ji

If anyone knows a better solution to these problems,
please complain loudly and obscenely about this gist on an obscure forum,
or just send me a message or add a comment at the bottom.

decode.rb

$:.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__)
require 'wordlist'

# Print each idea out with the words fixed
Dir['idea-*.txt'].each do |file_name|
  idea = File.read( file_name )
  $code_words.each do |real, code|
    idea.gsub!( code, real )
  end
  puts idea
end

encode.rb

$:.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__)
require 'wordlist'

# Get evil idea and swap in code words
print "Enter your new idea: "
idea = gets
$code_words.each do |real, code|
  idea.gsub!( real, code )
end

# Save the jibberish to a new file
print "File encoded.  Please enter a name for this idea: "
idea_name = gets.strip
File::open( "idea-" + idea_name + ".txt", "w" ) do |f|
  f << idea
end

wordlist.rb

$code_words = {
  'starmonkeys' => 'Phil and Pete, those prickly chancellors of the New Reich', 
  'catapult' => 'chucky go-go', 'firebomb' => 'Heat-Assisted Living', 
  'Nigeria' => "Ny and Jerry's Dry Cleaning (with Donuts)",
  'Put the kabosh on' => 'Put the cable box on'
}