Unknown

Unknown is a class representing a Numeric that is unknown. By using this class to represent unknown values instead of nil it is possible to avoid doing nil checks in your functions.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'unknown'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install unknown

Usage

Before using Unknown

# nil checking of arguments
def population(a,k,t)
  fail "a is missing" unless a
  fail "k is missing" unless k
  fail "t is missing" unless t
  a*Math.exp(-k*t)
end

population(20, 30, nil) #=> Exception "t is missing"

#

After using Unknown

require 'unknown'

def population(a=Unknown,k=Unknown,t=Unknown)
  a*Math.exp(-k*t)
end

population(20,30,Unknown) # => Unknown

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release to create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/[my-github-username]/unknown/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request