Data structures for a Blackjack game

Question

I'm trying to learn how to use Ruby and as my first application I'd like to build a console based Blackjack game.

I'm not too familiar with the Ruby constructs and the only way I'll learn and feel at home is build things and learn from my mistakes.

I'm thinking of creating a Card class, and has a Stack class has a collection of Cards.

However I don't know exactly what built in type I need to use to hold these Card objects.

Here is my card class:

class Card

  attr_accessor :number, :suit

  def initialize(number, suit)
    @number = number
    @suit = suit
  end

  def to_s
    "#{@number} of #{@suit}"
  end
end

Since I'm coming from C#, I thought of using something like List Cards {get;set;} - does something like this exists in Ruby or maybe there is a better more rubyesque way to do this.

Answer 1

Ruby is a dynamic language, so it usually doesn't rely on strict compile-time type checking, thus making constructions, such as templatized List<Card> fairly useless. Ruby generally has one universal data type of ordered collections - Array, which closely mimics ArrayList concept of Java/C#.

So, unless you want Stack to be something special, you can just use Array as is:

@stack = []
@stack << Card.new(6, :spades)
@stack << Card.new(10, :hearts)

or extend Array in some way:

class Stack < Array
  # some ultra-cool new methods
end

@stack = Stack.new
@stack << Card.new(...)

Answer 2

Ruby's builtin Array type has methods for acting like a stack:

a = [1, 2, 3]  # arrays can be initialized with []
a.push(4)      # a is now [1, 2, 3, 4]
a.pop          # returns 4, a is now [1, 2, 3]

Answer 3

Two Ruby Quiz episodes were dedicated to blackjack. The solutions to the second one might give you some ideas: http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz151.html