String concatenation vs. interpolation in Ruby

I am just starting to learn Ruby (first time programming), and have a basic syntactical question with regards to variables, and various ways of writing code.

Chris Pine's "Learn to Program" taught me to write a basic program like this...

num_cars_again= 2
puts 'I own ' + num_cars_again.to_s + ' cars.'

This is fine, but then I stumbled across the tutorial on ruby.learncodethehardway.com, and was taught to write the same exact program like this...

num_cars= 2
puts "I own #{num_cars} cars."

They both output the same thing, but obviously option 2 is a much shorter way to do it.

Is there any particular reason why I should use one format over the other?

Whenever TIMTOWTDI (there is more than one way to do it), you should look for the pros and cons. Using "string interpolation" (the second) instead of "string concatenation" (the first):

Pros:

• Is less typing
• Automatically calls to_s for you
• More idiomatic within the Ruby community
• Faster to accomplish during runtime

Cons:

• Automatically calls to_s for you (maybe you thought you had a string, and the to_s representation is not what you wanted, and hides the fact that it wasn't a string)
• Requires you to use " to delimit your string instead of ' (perhaps you have a habit of using ', or you previously typed a string using that and only later needed to use string interpolation)

Both interpolation and concatination has its own strength and weakness. Below I gave a benchmark which clearly demonstrates where to use concatination and where to use interpolation.

require 'benchmark'

iterations = 1_00_000
firstname = 'soundarapandian'
middlename = 'rathinasamy'
lastname = 'arumugam'

puts 'With dynamic new strings'
puts '===================================================='
5.times do
  Benchmark.bm(10) do |benchmark|
    benchmark.report('concatination') do
      iterations.times do
        'Mr. ' + firstname + middlename + lastname + ' aka soundar'
      end
    end

    benchmark.report('interpolaton') do
      iterations.times do
        "Mr. #{firstname} #{middlename} #{lastname} aka soundar"
      end
    end
  end
  puts '--------------------------------------------------'
end

puts 'With predefined strings'
puts '===================================================='
5.times do
  Benchmark.bm(10) do |benchmark|
    benchmark.report('concatination') do
      iterations.times do
        firstname + middlename + lastname
      end
    end

    benchmark.report('interpolaton') do
      iterations.times do
        "#{firstname} #{middlename} #{lastname}"
      end
    end
  end
  puts '--------------------------------------------------'
end

And below is the Benchmark result

Without predefined strings
====================================================
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.170000   0.000000   0.170000 (  0.165821)
interpolaton  0.130000   0.010000   0.140000 (  0.133665)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.180000   0.000000   0.180000 (  0.180410)
interpolaton  0.120000   0.000000   0.120000 (  0.125051)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.140000   0.000000   0.140000 (  0.134256)
interpolaton  0.110000   0.000000   0.110000 (  0.111427)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.130000   0.000000   0.130000 (  0.132047)
interpolaton  0.120000   0.000000   0.120000 (  0.120443)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.170000   0.000000   0.170000 (  0.170394)
interpolaton  0.150000   0.000000   0.150000 (  0.149601)
--------------------------------------------------
With predefined strings
====================================================
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.070000   0.000000   0.070000 (  0.067735)
interpolaton  0.100000   0.000000   0.100000 (  0.099335)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.060000   0.000000   0.060000 (  0.061955)
interpolaton  0.130000   0.000000   0.130000 (  0.127011)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.090000   0.000000   0.090000 (  0.092136)
interpolaton  0.110000   0.000000   0.110000 (  0.110224)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.080000   0.000000   0.080000 (  0.077587)
interpolaton  0.110000   0.000000   0.110000 (  0.112975)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.090000   0.000000   0.090000 (  0.088154)
interpolaton  0.140000   0.000000   0.140000 (  0.135349)
--------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

If strings already defined and sure they will never be nil use concatination else use interpolation.Use appropriate one which will result in better performance than one which is easy to indent.