Hello Foo STDIN read

What if the person is not called Foo? What if we would like to ask the users of their name and greet them that way? We can do this by reading from the keyboard which is, in technical terms called Standard Input or STDIN.

This is how we do it:


examples/intro/hello_foo_stdin.rb
print "Type in your name: "
person = STDIN.gets

puts "Hello #{person}, how are you?"

Here is what happens when I run the program: 


ruby examples/intro/hello_foo_stdin.rb

It prints: 


Type in your name:

Then I type in Bar (another well known name in the programmer community) and press ENTER and this is the output I see: 


Hello Bar
, how are you?
Why is it printed in two rows?

Because after we typed in Bar we pressed ENTER to tell the computer that we are done. However that ENTER generates a newline and that is included in the text our program receives. So in the variable person we have a newline at the end and when we print it, the next thing will be shown on a new line.