Multiple Line String Formatting

Question

Trying to format a mutliline string in Ruby

heredoc and %q{ } have the issue that they include whitespace used for formatting the code.

s = %q{Foo Bar Baz} puts s

Incorrectly outputs the following:

Foo Bar Baz

The following works, but is a bit ugly with the \ characters.

s = "Foo\n" \ " Bar\n" \ " Baz" puts s

The following works in python:

s = ("Foo\n" " Bar\n" " Baz") print s

Is there an equivalent in Ruby?

You should use textwrap.dedent as the equivalent Python example, because the Ruby snippet is hardly more complicated than your Python snippet. You should also make it clear that your not interested in non-builtin methods. — Niklas B.
– Niklas B., Commented Apr 11, 2012 at 20:21

peter · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-11 20:57:55Z

3

build in allright but more by hazard than intended i suppose

s = %w{ Foo Bar Baz} puts s => Foo Bar Baz

And if you want to keep the indentation of the first line, this one is surely build in by design

s = <<-END Foo Bar Baz END puts s => Foo Bar Baz

edited Apr 11, 2012 at 20:57

answered Apr 11, 2012 at 20:32

peter

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4 Comments

Andrew Marshall Over a year ago

It's probably better to call join("\n") on that first one, lest it only work as expected when called with puts.

peter Over a year ago

yeah, i considered doing so but the beauty of this solution is the simplicity and if you use other print methods you can always add it like eg print s.join("\n") You can also use p s to have the array look and if course it IS an array what in some cases suites fine. Moreover, the more you add the less build it is isn't it ? Thans for the suggestion Andrew

Andrew Marshall Over a year ago

Except the OP is asking for a string, not an array.

peter Over a year ago

Andrew, its starts as a string, gets arrayed and is presented like a string, if not good enough look at my second solution which best answers the OP's question

dbenhur · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-12 04:25:40Z

A trick I stole from The Ruby Way:

class String def heredoc(prefix='|') gsub /^\s*#{Regexp.quote(prefix)}/m, '' end end s = <<-END.heredoc |Foo | Bar | Baz END

bta · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-11 21:13:19Z

You can always do something like this:

s = ["Foo", " Bar", " Baz"].join("\n") puts s => Foo Bar Baz

That way, you have quotation marks to explicitly demarcate the beginning and end of the strings, and the indentation whitespace is not mixed up with the strings.

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