The word “puts” is used for simple output to the terminal screen. Below is some basic Ruby formatting. The “\” is called an escape character, and it tells Ruby to process the letter or symbol after that sign in a special way. For example, “\n” tells Ruby to create a new line. “\n\n” creates a blank line and then starts and content afterwards on its own line.
[ruby firstline="1"] puts "This is a simple simulation program" puts "\n\n" # This creates two lines [/ruby]
Puts outputs a string, so that every element included in a puts expression must be a string. To convert a number variable into a string, simply as “.to_s”.
To combine items of text and variables, use the “+” symbol, which means concatenate in this context. For example:
puts ”Income is ” + income.to_s + ”.”
Produces something similar to “Income is 100.” Let’s add that line to our program.
# Goal: to calculate interest income.
# Identify variable and initialize parameters
# Initial sum of money which is a number
income = 0.0 # Float
# Interest rate which is a number
time = 0 # Integer
# Calculate and Display Results
income = 10.0 ∗ time
puts ”Income is ” + income.to_s + ”.”