[Wtr-general] OT: Programming/Ruby Logic question

[Paul Carvalho]

Hi there, I've been staring at a piece of code trying to get it to work for
a while and I think I need a break.  I have just one piece of the puzzle
left to figure out and it's not really a Watir problem.  Here's the problem
simplified...

I have an array with changing contents that I'm working with.  For example:

array = ['foo', 'bar']
array = ['bar', 'bar']

--> The relative positions are important here.  The *first* occurrence of
'bar' should be implied to be "bar-1" and the second occurrence would be
"bar-2".

Now, the contents of these arrays are not only used to populate a text field
on an input page somewhere, but they are also used as lookups in a
spreadsheet to identify where the rest of the input data is.  I'm trying to
find a simple, elegant way to set the lookups but I'm running into a logic
wall. (Very likely due to a lack of sleep.)

Here are the lines of interest pertaining to the array data above:
----
start_col = 0
...
start_col = 30   if array[ position ] == 'bar' and ( something )
start_col = 40   if array[ position ] == 'bar' and ( something_else )
----

--> The part I'm having difficulty with is the "something" and
"something_else".  (FYI: 'position' is a local variable because these lines
are in a loop that iterates through the elements of 'array'.  So I need to
tell the script that the first time you see 'bar' it means go to the first
set of spreadsheet columns, but the second time you see it go to the second
set of spreadsheet columns.)

I originally had "something" check to see if it was the first element in the
array, but as you can see from the first example above, that's not
necessarily true.  Then I tried having "something" check to see if the
spreadsheet cell data for "bar-2" = 'None', but that's not necessarily true
either (i.e. see the second example).

I'm just worried that I might have programmed myself into a corner.  My
request for help here is my last attempt at a way out before I rewrite a
whole bunch of code so that this will work differently.

Renaming the array elements (i.e. the "bar") to be unique would certainly
solve this problem easily, but then it would break the code elsewhere.

Any suggestions?

Cheers.  Paul C.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/wtr-general/attachments/20061027/d61293d1/attachment.html