Why file handling matters in Ruby - See It in Action

Why file handling matters

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are creating a simple program to keep track of your daily to-do list. You want to save your tasks to a file so you can open the program later and see what you need to do. This is where file handling becomes important.

🎯 Goal: You will build a small Ruby program that writes a list of tasks to a file, reads the tasks back from the file, and shows them on the screen. This will help you understand why file handling matters in programming.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of tasks as an array

Create a filename variable to store the file name

Write the tasks to the file using file handling

Read the tasks from the file and print them

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Saving and loading data like to-do lists, notes, or settings is common in many programs. File handling lets programs remember information even after they close.

💼 Career

Understanding file handling is important for software developers, data analysts, and anyone who builds applications that store data persistently.

1

Create the list of tasks

Create an array called tasks with these exact strings: "Buy groceries", "Clean the house", "Pay bills"

Ruby

# Create an array called tasks with the given tasks
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create an array and separate items with commas.

2

Set the filename

Create a variable called filename and set it to the string "tasks.txt"

Ruby

tasks = ["Buy groceries", "Clean the house", "Pay bills"]
# Create a variable called filename and set it to "tasks.txt"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a simple string assignment for the filename.

3

Write tasks to the file

Use File.open with filename and mode "w" to open the file for writing. Inside the block, write each task from tasks to the file on its own line using file.puts(task) in a for loop with variables task.

Ruby

tasks = ["Buy groceries", "Clean the house", "Pay bills"]
filename = "tasks.txt"
# Open the file for writing and write each task on its own line
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a block with File.open and a for loop to write each task.

4

Read and print tasks from the file

Use File.open with filename and mode "r" to open the file for reading. Inside the block, use a for loop with variable line to read each line from the file and print it using print line.

Ruby

tasks = ["Buy groceries", "Clean the house", "Pay bills"]
filename = "tasks.txt"
File.open(filename, "w") do |file|
  for task in tasks
    file.puts(task)
  end
end
# Open the file for reading and print each line
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print line inside the loop to show each task exactly as saved.