Question

Recently started learning ruby and I’ve created a class for family members that contains name, age, sex, marital status, and traits. I am trying to write a method that will determine if a family member is a parent and if whether or not its the mother or the father.

so the code for the method is as follows:

def is_father?(age, sex)
    if age > 30
      puts "is parent"
          if sex == "Male"
            then puts "is father"
          else puts "not father"
          end
    end
  end

And a family member might look like this:

fm1=Family.new("John", "Male", 54, "Married", "Annoying")

after being initialized like this:

class Family
  def initialize(name, sex, age, status, trait)
    @fam_name=name
    @fam_sex=sex
    @fam_age=age
    @fam_stat=status
    @fam_trait=trait
  end
end

If a person contains the previously mentioned characteristics, how do I just pass age + sex into this method? Thanks in advance for your help

Answer 1

You must store your data during initialization in attributes. later you can use them without using parameters of the method.

Example:

class Family
   def initialize(name, sex, age, status, trait)
    @fam_name=name
    @fam_sex=sex
    @fam_age=age
    @fam_stat=status
    @fam_trait=trait
  end
  def is_parent?; @fam_age > 30;end
  def is_father?
    is_parent? and @fam_sex == "Male"
  end
  def to_s
    result = @fam_name.dup
    if @fam_age > 30
      result <<  " is parent and is "
          if @fam_sex == "Male"
            result << "father"
          else 
            result << "not father"
          end
      end
    result
  end
end

fm1=Family.new("John", "Male", 54, "Married", "Annoying")
puts fm1.ilding is_parent?
puts fm1.is_father?
puts fm1

Remarks:

• I modified your is_father? – methods ending on ? normally returns a boolean value.
• I moved your text building to method to_s. to_s is called if you print your object with puts.
• Better you avoid puts inside your methods. Most of the times, it is better to return an answer string and make the puts when you call the method.

---

Perhaps I misunderstand your request.

If is_father? is no method of Family and you need access to the attributes, then you must define a getter method:

class Family
  def initialize(name, sex, age, status, trait)
    @fam_name=name
    @fam_sex=sex
    @fam_age=age
    @fam_stat=status
    @fam_trait=trait
  end
  attr_reader :fam_sex
  attr_reader :fam_age
end

fm1=Family.new("John", "Male", 54, "Married", "Annoying")
puts fm1.fam_sex
puts fm1.fam_age


is_father?(fm1.fam_age, fm1.fam_sex)