Input with gets

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Ruby journey — lesson 29 of 88.

So far, you've learned how to display output. Now let's learn how to receive input from the user. The gets method reads a line of text that the user types in.

name = gets
puts "Hello, #{name}"

When Ruby encounters gets, it waits for the user to type something and press Enter. Whatever they type gets stored in the variable. If the user types "Alice", the output would be:

Hello, Alice

There's something important to notice here. When the user presses Enter, that newline character gets included in the input.

That's why "Alice" appears with an extra blank line after it. The variable actually contains "Alice\n" where \n represents the newline.

You can use p to see this clearly:

name = gets
p name

If the user types "Ruby", the output shows:

"Ruby\n"

This trailing newline can cause unexpected behavior in your programs. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to remove it.

Challenge

Easy

Read a name from the user using gets and store it in a variable called name.

Then use p to output the name variable, which will show the raw string including the trailing newline character.

For example, if the input is Ruby, your output should display the string with its quotation marks and the \n character visible.

Cheat sheet

The gets method reads user input from the console:

name = gets
puts "Hello, #{name}"

When gets is executed, the program waits for the user to type something and press Enter. The input is stored in the variable.

The gets method includes the newline character (\n) when the user presses Enter:

name = gets
p name
# If user types "Ruby", outputs: "Ruby\n"

Use p to display the raw string representation, which shows the newline character explicitly.

Try it yourself

# TODO: Read a name from the user using gets and store it in a variable called name


# TODO: Use p to output the name variable

Test yourself

This lesson includes a short quiz. Start the lesson to answer it and track your progress.

All lessons in Fundamentals

1Introduction to Ruby

What is Ruby?Hello World Comments in Ruby

4Operators Part 2

Logical Operators Part 1 Logical Operators Part 2 Recap - Simple Logic Logical Operators Part 3 Logical Operators Part 4

7Bill Split Calculator

Welcome Message Getting User Input

Calculating Tip And Total

Splitting The Bill

Formatted Output

10FizzBuzz with a Twist

Game Overview The FizzBuzz Method

Looping Through Numbers

Adding The Twist

13Arrays Advanced

Array Slicing with Ranges Array Slicing with Indexes Array Operators Include? Method

16Final Challenges

Flat Asterisk Pyramid Pattern Finder What To Buy

3Operators Part 1

Arithmetic Operators Modulo Operator Arithmetic Shortcuts Recap - Simple Math Comparison Operators

6Basic IO

Output with puts Output with print and p Output With VariablesInput with getsChomp Method Type Conversion Recap - Age Calculator Recap - True or False

9Methods

Defining a Method Method Parameters Return Values Recap - Sigma Method Recap - Validation Method Default Parameter Values

12Iterating Over Collections

Each Iterator Each with Index Iterating Over Strings Map and Collect

15Daily Expense Tracker

Project Overview Exit The Program