Print in Ruby

What is Print in Ruby?

The print in Ruby method is a built-in method for displaying output on the console screen. It accepts one or more parameters and shows them in the console without including a newline character. The print method can take strings, numbers, arrays, and other objects as arguments.

Syntax

The basic syntax for print is:

Here, argument1, argument2, argument3, and so on are the arguments that we want to pass to the print method.

Parameters

The print in Ruby can take multiple arguments separated by commas. These arguments can be of any type, including strings, integers, and objects. The print method concatenates all the arguments and displays them on the console without adding a new line character at the end. If we pass multiple arguments, the print method inserts a space between each argument.

Return Values

The print in Ruby does not return any value explicitly. Instead, it returns nil implicitly after printing the output to the console.

Examples

Let's take a look at some examples to understand how the print in Ruby works:

Example 1:

In the above example, we have used the print method to display two separate strings without adding a new line character. The output is a concatenated string of both arguments.

Example 2:

In the above example, we have used the print method to display a string and an integer value without adding a new line character. The output is a concatenated string of both arguments with a space between them.

Example 3:

In the above example, we passed an array of characters as an argument to the print method. It displays the array without adding a new line character.

Print vs Puts vs P in Ruby

Ruby has three built-in methods that are used for displaying output on the console screen. These methods are print, puts, and p.

Let's look at the difference between them:

Print

• The print method in Ruby prints the result to the console without including a newline character.
• It may concatenate several arguments separated by commas to generate a single output string.
• After showing the output, it implicitly returns nil.

Puts

• The puts method in Ruby prints the output to the console, including a newline character at the conclusion.
• It also can accept any number of parameters and concatenates them into a single string before printing them to the console screen

P

• The p method in Ruby prints the output to the console, including the quotes and escape characters.
• It also inserts a newline character at the end of the output, as the puts method does.
• It just returns the argument that was supplied to it.

In summary, the print method is used to display output without adding a newline character, while puts and p methods are used to display output with a newline character. The p method displays the output with quotes and escapes characters, while puts and print do not.