Learn to Program, 3rd Edition

Branching

Branching is a simple concept, but it’s powerful. It’s how we tell Ruby to sometimes do this thing, and other times do that thing. Here’s what it looks like in code:

puts "Hello, what's your name?" 
name = gets.chomp
puts "Hello, #{name}."

if name == "Chris"
  puts "What a lovely name!"
end

Hello, what's your name?
Chris
Hello, Chris.
What a lovely name!

But if we put in a different name…

Hello, what's your name?
Chewbacca
Hello, Chewbacca.

And that’s branching. If what comes after the if keyword is true, you run the code between the if and the end. If what comes after the if keyword is false, you don’t. Plain and simple.

You may have noticed that the code is indented ...