Ruby object prints out as pointer

Question

I\'m trying to create a class, which has a constructor that takes a single argument. When I create a new instance of the object, it returns a pointer.

class Adde         


        

Answer 1

You aren't doing anything wrong. Assuming you see something like # then in Ruby this is just the default representation of the object that you've created.

If you want to change this behaviour to be more friendly when you pass your object to puts you can override the to_s (to string) method. e.g.

class Adder
  def initialize(my_num)
    @my_num = my_num
  end

  def to_s
    "Adder with my_num = #{@my_num}"
  end
end

then when you do puts y you'll see Adder with my_num = 12

You can also override the inspect method which is what is used, for example, when the Ruby irb console prints the representation of your object e.g.

class Adder
  def inspect
    to_s # return same representation as to_s
  end
end

then in irb:

>> y = Adder.new 12
=> Adder with my_num = 12