On Feb 19, 7:59 pm, Aaron Patterson <aaron_patter... / speakeasy.net>
wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 09:20:13AM +0900, kenbo wrote:
> > I am coming to Ruby from LISP where I was more competent when it came
> > to symbol
> > manipulation :-)   I have spent some time trying to solve this problem
> > and figure it's my
> > general lack of deep knowledge ala Ruby that keeps me from seeing an
> > "easy" solution.
>
> > With that said, I apologize if this has been answered and I missed
> > it.
>
> > I have astringin a variable.
> > foo = "bobo"
>
> > I want to use foo to access anarraycalled bobo.   I will have bobo
> > defined already.
>
> > Is there a way to do this?
>
> eval() might be what you're looking for.  You can use eval to return thearraythen index in to it.  Here's an example from:
>
> irb(main):001:0> awesome_array = %w{ one two three four five }
> => ["one", "two", "three", "four", "five"]
> irb(main):002:0> foo = 'awesome_array'
> => "awesome_array"
> irb(main):003:0> puts eval(foo)[1]
> two
> => nil
> irb(main):004:0>
>
> Hope that helps!
>
> --
> Aaron Pattersonhttp://tenderlovemaking.com/- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Thanks for the folks that mentioned eval---I thought of that after the
posting but
assumed that, as in LISP, there might be a better way to accomplish
it :-)

It's nice to see more similarities between LISP and Ruby.

kenny