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Ruby Ruby Booleans Build a Simple Todo List Program Finding Array Items

Posted by Andrew Alvarez
Andrew Alvarez
11,964 Points

HELP!

Challenge Task 1 of 1

Fill in the find_index method to return the index of a todo item in the @todo_items array given the name. The method should return the index of the item if the item is found and nil if it is not found.

Bummer! Try again!

what am i doing wrong uugh!

todo_list.rb 
 def find_index(name)
    index = 0
    found = false

    todo_items.each do |todo_item| #add each method to loop through array
        if todo_item.name == name
            found = true
            break;
        end
        index += 1
    end

    if found
        return index
    else
        return nil
    end
  end

1 Answer

Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points
Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points

There are a few ways you could do this, first though you want to make sure you're only increasing your index count if you're not meeting the condition so that should be within an else statement.

def find_index(name)
  index = 0
  found = false
  todo_items.each do |todo_item|
    if todo_item.name == name
      found = true
    end
    if found
      break
    else
      index += 1
    end
  end
  if found
    return index
  else
    return nil
  end
end

That does solve the problem, though that solution might feel a bit verbose to you it's the solution from within the course.

You can bring it down by using ternary operators, like this:

def find_index(name)
  index = 0
  found = false
  todo_items.each do |todo_item|
    found = true if todo_item.name == name
    found ? break : index += 1
  end
  return found ? index : nil
end

You sacrifice some readability depending on the developer and the readers familiarity with the language.