String Methods Overview

Ruby gives strings a deep collection of built-in methods for common transformations. You don't need extra libraries, they're part of every string you create.

Some of the most useful ones change case or remove whitespace:

name = "  Alice  "
puts name.strip       # "Alice"
puts name.upcase      # "  ALICE  "
puts name.downcase    # "  alice  "
puts name.reverse     # "  ecilA  "

Others tell you something about the string:

word = "hello"
puts word.length            # 5
puts word.include?("ell")   # true
puts word.start_with?("he") # true

Most of these return a new string. The original stays untouched unless you use the bang version (e.g. upcase!).