Get The Name Of A Local Variable

Question

When developing & debugging, I sometimes wish I could write a 1-liner that dumped the names, types & values of a bunch of variables. The problem is I don\'t know ho

Answer 1

foo = 1
bar = "42"
baz = Hash.new

Varspec = Struct.new(:name, :type, :value, :inspect_str) do
  def to_s
    "#{name} = (#{type}) #{inspect_str}"
  end
end

lvars = local_variables.map {|lvar|
  lvar = lvar.to_s
  val = eval(lvar)
  val = val.dup rescue val
  Varspec.new(lvar, val.class, val, val.inspect)
}

puts lvars
# baz = (Hash) {}
# bar = (String) "42"
# foo = (Fixnum) 1

Or, you could just use a debugger. That's what they were invented for, after all.