/Michael

Very nice to see the candy machine coming to some use. I remember you talking about it when we worked together in T-Systems…. Ah, the good old days!

def header path
  patch_number =  path.scan(/.*Patch_(.*)\//i).to_s 
  separator = "\n#{'-' * 58}\n"
  separator + "Patch: #{patch_number}" + separator
end
def compilation source_file, compilation_file
   File.open(compilation_file, "w") do |f|
     Dir["./*/"+ source_file].each do |path| 
        f.write header(path) + File.read(path)
     end
   end
end
compilation "README.txt", "all_readme.txt"
compilation "BESKRIVNING.txt", "all_beskrivning.txt"

def patch_number path
  path.scan(/.*Patch_(.*)\//i)
end

Probably the latter in defense of separation of concerns, but I do cheat now and then on < 50 line programs.

Probably just pasting problem, but you should indent line 15-16 in Round 3 and line 10 in round 4 to avoid confusion for other newborn Rubyists.

I suspect my “final” solution would look something like this, which I suppose reflects my views on readability and terseness – when you’re used to the language idioms of course.

def header path
  patch_number = path.scan(/.*Patch_(.*)\//i)
  separator = "\n#{'-' * 58}\n" 
  separator + "Patch: #{patch_number}" + separator
end

File.open("all-readme.txt", "w") do |f|
  Dir["./*/README.txt"].each do |path| 
    f.write header(path) + File.read(path)
  end
end

(And yes, the separator line is tongue-in-cheek

On a tangent about language idioms: I once was a strong proponent of “anyone should be able to read the code regardless of which language he/she comes from, but over the years I’ve realized that it’s not a good thing. Today I think you need to get past the basic idioms of a language before you can expect to be a fluent reader.

Kind regards
Niclas