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Ruby

John Fisher
John Fisher
7,974 Points
Posted by John Fisher
John Fisher
7,974 Points

include? method help

Hi.

I'm just trying to figure a few things out in Ruby.

I want to use an if else statement to check if the input from a user uses certain combinations of words/strings.

answer = gets.chomp
if answer.include? "word1" && "word2"
  puts "response 1"
elsif answer.include? "word1" && "word3"
  puts "response 2"
elsif answer.include? "word3" && "word4"
  puts "response 3"
else
  puts "try again"
end

however, I'm getting some unexpected results.

if the user inputs just "word1" they get "try again". That's seems fine

if user inputs a string with "word1" and "word2" they get "response 1". Also seems fine

if user inputs a string with "word1" and "word3" they get "response 2". This is fine too.

However, if the user enters "word3" and "word4" they also get "response 2"

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I can't find much information on the include? method. Does it except conditionals like &&?

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks

2 Answers

Justin Horner
STAFF
Justin Horner
Treehouse Guest Teacher
Justin Horner
Justin Horner
Treehouse Guest Teacher

Hello John,

Do you want to use OR instead of AND so that if a user types "word1" OR "word2" they get "response 1"? You'll want to include parenthesis for the include? method. In this case your code would look like:

answer = gets.chomp
if answer.include?("word1") || answer.include?("word2")
  puts "response 1"
elsif answer.include?("word1") || answer.include?("word3")
  puts "response 2"
elsif answer.include?("word3") || answer.include?("word4")
  puts "response 3"
else
  puts "try again"
end

I hope this helps.

John Fisher
John Fisher
7,974 Points
John Fisher
John Fisher
7,974 Points

Thanks Justin

Yeah, I was getting the syntax wrong. Was forgetting to put the answer.include? on the righthand side of the &&

All good practice tho :)

John Fisher
John Fisher
7,974 Points
John Fisher
John Fisher
7,974 Points

After much trial and error, I figured it out.

needs to look like this...

if answer.include?("word1") && answer.include?("word2")

I tried this originally without the parenthesis and it crashed.