How Ruby interprets code at runtime - Try It Yourself

How Ruby interprets code at runtime

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are writing a simple Ruby program that calculates the total price of items in a shopping cart. Ruby reads and runs your code line by line, interpreting it at runtime. This project will help you understand how Ruby processes your code step by step.

🎯 Goal: You will create a Ruby program that stores item prices, sets a tax rate, calculates the total price including tax, and then prints the final amount. This will show how Ruby interprets variables, calculations, and output commands at runtime.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a hash with exact item names and prices

Create a variable for the tax rate

Calculate the total price including tax using Ruby code

Print the final total price

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Calculating totals with tax is common in shopping apps and billing systems.

💼 Career

Understanding how Ruby interprets code helps you write clear, correct programs for real-world tasks.

1

Create the item prices hash

Create a hash called items with these exact entries: 'apple' => 2.0, 'banana' => 1.5, 'orange' => 3.0

Ruby

# Create a hash called items with the given prices
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a hash and separate keys and values with =>.

2

Set the tax rate

Create a variable called tax_rate and set it to 0.08 (which means 8% tax)

Ruby

items = { 'apple' => 2.0, 'banana' => 1.5, 'orange' => 3.0 }
# Create a variable tax_rate and set it to 0.08
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 0.08 to the variable tax_rate.

3

Calculate total price including tax

Create a variable called total_price that sums all item prices from items and adds tax using tax_rate

Ruby

items = { 'apple' => 2.0, 'banana' => 1.5, 'orange' => 3.0 }
tax_rate = 0.08
# Calculate total_price including tax
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use items.values.sum to add prices, then multiply by 1 + tax_rate to add tax.

4

Print the total price

Write a puts statement to print the total_price rounded to 2 decimal places using round(2)

Ruby

items = { 'apple' => 2.0, 'banana' => 1.5, 'orange' => 3.0 }
tax_rate = 0.08
total_price = items.values.sum * (1 + tax_rate)
# Print total_price rounded to 2 decimals
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use puts total_price.round(2) to print the result with two decimals.