Question

I have a hash with cat names for keys and cat instances for values. Is there a way to make it so that when people type a response that isn’t in a key in the cats hash for the terminal to reprint the puts "Which cat would you like to know about?" question or type: “Try again”? I guess I’m asking for sort of a “while… else”.

puts "Which cat would you like to know about?"
puts cats.keys
response = gets.chomp

while cats.include?(response)
  puts "The cat you chose is #{cats[response].age} old"
  puts "The cat you chose is named #{cats[response].name}"
  puts "The cat you chose is a #{cats[response].breed} cat"
  puts "Is there another cat would you like to know about?"
  response = gets.chomp
end

Answer 1

There isn’t a “while…else”, as far as I know. If you do not mind the loop continuing regardless of whether the response is a valid cat name or not, maybe this will work for you:

puts "Which cat would you like to know about?"
puts cats.keys

while true
  response = gets.chomp
  if response.empty?
    break
  elsif cats.include?(response)
    puts "The cat you chose is #{cats[response].age} old"
    puts "The cat you chose is named #{cats[response].name}"
    puts "The cat you chose is a #{cats[response].breed} cat"
    puts "Is there another cat would you like to know about?"
  else
    puts "There is no cat with that name. Try again."
  end
end

This will repeatedly prompt the user for a cat name, until the user responds with an empty string, at which point it will break out of the loop.