This gem provides some extensions to Ruby classes that make my life a lot easier.

It doesn't aim to be a comprehensive list of improvements, but rather a curated list of things I find myself encountering frequently.

Install Powertools with gem install powertools.

Then, you can add require 'powertools' to your Ruby file to access all the features provided by Powertools.

You may also want to only use certain features.

You can currently also use the following to selectively add features:

• require 'powertool/maybe_chain'
• require 'powertool/range'
• require 'powertool/set'
• require 'powertool/string'

Some features may introduce breaking changes to the Ruby standard library. These 'breaking changes' are generally minor changes which in my opinion conform to my expectations about how the language should work.

Still, I'll make an effor to list any changes that break a potential assumption about the Ruby standard library here.

If you are relying on (4..1).each { |_| ... } to do nothing, because it's going from a higher number to a lower number, you should not use the powertool/range package.

#sort is provided as a helper method to ensure your range is from smallest to largest.

#each now works backwards for all classes that include a #pred method. This is only enabled when a range is between two elements of the same class. (For example, (date.today..100000000) is a valid Ruby range. We fallback to the default #each implementation for these.)

#maybe_chain is added to Array and Hash. It takes an array as an argument, and attempts to access nested data based on the elements of the argument. If at any point it cannot access an element, it will return nil without throwing an error. This can be very useful for accessing deeply nested data structures, like parsed JSON objects, which may have nil elements.

E.g.

a = [1,2,3,{d:[9]}]
a.maybe_chain [0]
=> 1
a.maybe_chain [3]
=> {:d=>[1]}
a.maybe_chain [3, :d, 0]
=> 9
a.maybe_chain [4]
=> nil
a.maybe_chain [4, :missing_element]
=> nil

#pop has been added to Set. This returns a random element from the set, and removes it from the set.