RichardOnRails wrote:
> On Jul 27, 12:36 pm, Prateek Agarwal <prateek.a... / gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am new to Ruby and am still learning some of the basic stuff.
>> What's the method name for the Power operation(as in 'a' to the power
>> 'b')?
>> --
>> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> 
> Whoops.  I forgot to paste in the program (sorry),  which follows:
> 
> =begin        # Note this comments out all lines until the =end
> def power(a,b)
> result=a**b   # "a" should be "a.chomp.to_1"; ditto "b";
>               # the "chomp" removes the newline which the user presses
>               # "result" is unnecessary
> result.to_i   # does nothing
> return result # unnecessary:
>               # Since we've eliminated everything else, the method
>               # has only one statement, i.e. the expression
>               # a ** b with the replacements suggested above
>               # Ruby returns the last statement's value
> end
> 
> puts "a="     # use printf rather than puts (which appends a newline)
> a=gets
> a.to_i        # does nothing; "a" does not get change, and the
> result
>               # is discarded
> puts "b="     # same as "a"
> b=gets
> b.to_i	      # ditto as for "a"
> c=power(a,b)  # numeric result assigned to c, probably an integer but
>               # not necessarily
> puts "c=#{c}" # These final two lines might be more elegantly
>               # written in Ruby as suggested below
> =end
> 
> # The result of all these changes are the following 8 lines
> # (plus blank lines); save them, say, as:       Test.rb
> # and run them as:                              ruby Test.rb
> 
> def power(a,b)
>   a.chomp.to_i**b.chomp.to_i
> end
> 
> printf "a="
> a = gets
> print "b="
> b = gets
> puts "%d**%d = %d" % [a, b, power(a,b)]


As an "improvement" to your code I would take the chomp and to_i out of 
the power function to make it more generic and add them after the gets.