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Ruby Ruby Booleans Build a Simple Todo List Program Finding Array Items

Andrew Insley
Andrew Insley
7,014 Points
Posted by Andrew Insley
Andrew Insley
7,014 Points

Won't return nil, and can' understand why?

I am stuck with this problem, I know what I want the code to do and think I have cracked it but I keep getting a message saying that it won't return "nil". I think that the code that I have put in should get it to return nil with the

else return nil

Please help?

todo_list.rb 
class TodoList
  attr_reader :name, :todo_items

  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
    @todo_items = []
  end

  def add_item(name)
    todo_items.push(TodoItem.new(name))
  end

  def find_index(name)
    index = 0
    found = true
    todo_items.each do |todo_item|
      if todo_item.name == name
      end
      index += 1
      break if found
    end
    if found
      return index
    else
      return  nil
    end
  end

  end

1 Answer

Seth Reece
Seth Reece
32,867 Points
Seth Reece
Seth Reece
32,867 Points

Hi Andrew,

It looks like you are setting found to true in your find_index method. There is no conditional that will set it to false so it will always return true. e.g.

def find_index(name)
    index = 0
    found = false
    todo_items.each do |todo_item|
      if todo_item.name == name
        found = true
        break
      end
      index += 1
    end
    if found
      return index
    else
      return nil
    end
  end
Maya Mathews
Maya Mathews
7,342 Points

Seth is right. The code return nil will never be executed.