I was reading the erb section of Progamming Ruby this morning. WRT <
%, I note that they say, "Insert the given Ruby code at this point in
the generated program. If it outputs anything include this output in
the result."
The last sentence left me a bit confused. Surely I can't do something
like:
which seemed to say that's exactly what I could do. However, of
course when I tried it, it didn't work. That's not too surprising to
me since it was always my understanding that 'print' directed output
to the console and not to standard out.
Anyway, can someone clear the confusion for me. If there is a way to
use 'print' as is suggested (or something similar), I'd sure like to
know about it as it would come in handy every once in a while.
<%= is the output block, and <% is just an evaluation block.
Yes. That's the way I have always understood it. So, if that's the
case, WRT '<%', what does the sentence, "If it outputs anything,
include this output in the result" in Programming Ruby mean?
The wording in the book is confusing you because you are only thinking
about erb in the context of RoR.
Here is a slightly more detailed explanation:
<% print ‘foo’ %> prints ‘foo’ to stdout connected to the process
that is interpreting the erb, but does not get included in the output
generated by the template.
<%= ‘foo’ %> inserts ‘foo’ into the output generated by template.
Where this output ends up depends on what the application interpreting
the erb does with the output, which in the case of rails is the
browser. However, an application could write it to a file, print it to
stderr, etc.
For example:
require 'erb'
template = ERB.new "The value is: <% print 'foo' %>"
puts template.result
results in “fooThe value is:” because foo is printed to stdout
immediately, but the results are stored then printed to stdout via puts.
require 'erb'
template = ERB.new "The value is: <%= 'foo' %>"
puts template.result
results in “The value is: foo” because foo is inserted into the output
from the template then printed to stdout via puts.
The wording in the book is confusing you because you are only thinking
about erb in the context of RoR.
Here is a slightly more detailed explanation:
<% print ‘foo’ %> prints ‘foo’ to stdout connected to the process
that is interpreting the erb, but does not get included in the output
generated by the template.
<%= ‘foo’ %> inserts ‘foo’ into the output generated by template.
Where this output ends up depends on what the application interpreting
the erb does with the output, which in the case of rails is the
browser. However, an application could write it to a file, print it to
stderr, etc.
For example:
require 'erb'
template = ERB.new "The value is: <% print 'foo' %>"
`puts template.result
`
results in “fooThe value is:” because foo is printed to stdout
immediately, but the results are stored then printed to stdout via puts.
require 'erb'
template = ERB.new "The value is: <%= 'foo' %>"
`puts template.result
`
results in “The value is: foo” because foo is inserted into the output
from the template then printed to stdout via puts.
