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Ruby Ruby Collections Ruby Arrays Adding Items to Arrays

Why do I need to do `puts grocery_list.inspect` ? Why can't I just do `puts grocery_list`?

I tried both, and they both seem to do the same...show me the array of grocery_list.

I always wondered the same thing. Tagging Jason Anders

1 Answer

I found the answer by looking it up in the Ruby documentation.

.inspect() Is basically the same thing as .to_s. They convert arrays into strings.

If you call puts on an array itself, for example:

my_list = [1, 2, 3]
puts my_list

It will print:

1
2
3

However, if you first inspect the array, it will look like:

my_list = [1, 2, 3]
puts my_list.inspect

It will print:

[1, 2, 3]

As you see, with inspect, it will print the array raw. Without it will print it in the pretty format.

Thank you!!

No problem :)