Tim Toady

Tim Toady / TIMTOWTDI is a programming motto from Perl users. It stands for There Is More Than One Way To Do It. Ruby is inspired by Perl and also follows the same principle.

For example, consider the problem of looping. It may be hard to believe but there are 9 different ways to loop in Ruby.



100.times do
puts "I will not throw paper airplanes in class"
end

1.upto(100) do |i|
puts "#{i}. I will not throw paper airplanes in class"
end

for i in 1..100
puts "#{i}. I will not throw paper airplanes in class"
end


Look at the different solutions for the famous 99 bottles of beer.



i = 99
while i >= 0 do
bottles = "#{i.zero? ? 'No more' : i} bottles"
bottles.chop! if i == 1
puts "Take one down and pass it around, #{bottles} of beer on the wall.\n" unless i == 99
puts "#{bottles} of beer on the wall, #{bottles} of beer."
i -= 1
end
puts "Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall."

i = 99
until i < 0 do
bottles = "#{i.zero? ? 'No more' : i} bottles"
bottles.chop! if i == 1
puts "Take one down and pass it around, #{bottles} of beer on the wall.\n" unless i == 99
puts "#{bottles} of beer on the wall, #{bottles} of beer."
i -= 1
end
puts "Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall."

i = 99
loop do
bottles = "#{i.zero? ? 'No more' : i} bottles"
bottles.chop! if i == 1
puts "Take one down and pass it around, #{bottles} of beer on the wall.\n" unless i == 99
puts "#{bottles} of beer on the wall, #{bottles} of beer."
i -= 1
break if i < 0
end
puts "Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall."


There are several choices for even looping through the elements 
of an array.Consider dealing a deck of cards in a game. 



suits = ['♥','♠','♦','♣']
cards = 2..10.to_a + ['J','Q','K','A']
deck = suits.collect {|suit| cards.collect {|card| "#{card}#{suit}"}}.flatten.shuffle

deck.each do |card|
  deal card
end

for card in deck
  deal card
end

deck.each_with_index do |card,i|
  deal "Player#{i%4+1}", card
end

The number of choices gives the programmer the freedom to choose a looping construct based on the expressiveness for a particular problem.