Times method for counted repetition in Ruby - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using the Times Method for Counted Repetition in Ruby

📖 Scenario: You are helping a small bakery keep track of how many cupcakes they bake each day. They want to repeat a simple message for each cupcake baked to motivate their team.

🎯 Goal: Build a Ruby program that uses the times method to repeat a message exactly 5 times, showing the cupcake number each time.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable called cupcakes and set it to 5

Create a variable called message and set it to the string "Cupcake baked!"

Use the times method on cupcakes to repeat a block 5 times

Inside the block, print the message followed by the cupcake number starting from 1

Print the output exactly as shown in the final output

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Bakeries and other small businesses often need to repeat tasks or messages a set number of times, like counting items or printing labels.

💼 Career

Understanding counted repetition with methods like <code>times</code> is a basic skill for automating repetitive tasks in programming jobs.

1

Set up the number of cupcakes

Create a variable called cupcakes and set it to the number 5.

Ruby

# Create a variable called cupcakes and set it to 5
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use = to assign the number 5 to the variable cupcakes.

2

Create the message variable

Create a variable called message and set it to the string "Cupcake baked!".

Ruby

cupcakes = 5
# Create a variable called message and set it to "Cupcake baked!"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to use quotes around the text to make it a string.

3

Use the times method to repeat the message

Use the times method on cupcakes to repeat a block 5 times. Inside the block, print the message followed by the cupcake number starting from 1. Use puts and the block variable i to show the number.

Ruby

cupcakes = 5
message = "Cupcake baked!"
# Use cupcakes.times do |i| to repeat 5 times
# Inside the block, print message and cupcake number starting from 1
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The block variable i starts at 0, so add 1 to show cupcake numbers starting at 1.

4

Print the final output

Run the program to print the message 5 times with cupcake numbers from 1 to 5.

Ruby

cupcakes = 5
message = "Cupcake baked!"
cupcakes.times do |i|
  puts "#{message} #{i + 1}"
end
# Run the program to see the output

Need a hint?

Make sure your program prints exactly 5 lines, each with the message and the correct cupcake number.