On Nov 14, 2005, at 11:27 PM, Interfecus wrote:

> Thanks, I'll remember that. I was getting rather confused about which
> of the print, puts, or p commands to use for any given task.

print() is for when you want to do all the work yourself:

   >> print [1, 2, 3]
   123=> nil
   >> print "a line"
   a line=> nil

(Note the lack of newlines above.)

puts() is when you want Ruby to make pretty human readable output for  
you:

   >> puts [1, 2, 3]
   1
   2
   3
   => nil
   >> puts "a line"
   a line
   => nil

p() is for "inspect()ing" objects to see what they look like under  
the hood (great for debugging):

   >> p [1, 2, 3]
   [1, 2, 3]
   => nil
   >> p "a line"
   "a line"
   => nil

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II