We have the name of the file in a variable called filename and we create anothe variable called sum where we are going to hold the sum of the numbers. We initialize it to 0.

Then we open the file, by default, for reading and get back the filehandle.

Using an each loop we can iterate over the lines of the file. In each iteration the content of the current line is in the variable called line. Even though we expect it to be a number, what Ruby read in is kept as String. We need to convert it into a number, an integer number in this case, using the to_i method. We can then add the number to the content of sum using the += operator.

After the loop is finished, when we don't have anything else to do with the file, we should call the close method to close the file.

At the end we print out the content of sum

examples/ruby/sum_numbers_in_file.rb

filename = '../data/numbers.txt'

sum = 0
fh = open filename
fh.each do |line|
   sum += line.to_i
end
fh.close

puts "The total is #{sum}"

Sum of numbers using a one-liner

There is another solution, using some more advanced techniques in Ruby:

Here the whole expression computing the sum is embedded ina string. The final result of this expression will be included in the print.

examples/ruby/sum_numbers_in_file_oneliner.rb

filename = '../data/numbers.txt'

puts "The total is #{open(filename).readlines.map(&:to_i).reduce :+}"

Inside the string we have the following expression:

open(filename).readlines.map(&:to_i).reduce :+

Let's take that apart. The first statement is open(filename). It opens the file for reading and returns a filehandle.

Instead of assigning it to variable though. we immediately use this filehandle and call the readlines method of it.

the readlines method will return a an array of the lines. Each line in the original file is an element in the returned array.

The map method will go over each element of the array and call the given function on each element. Specifically it will call to_i on each element of the array converting each element into a number. So the map method will already return an array of numbers.

In the last section we call the reduce method. It reduces the array to a single element by executing the expression + on every two element. More specifically it takes the first two calues and executes the statement (+) on these two. Then it takes the resul of this and the next element (the third element) and executes it again adding them together. Then it takes the result of this and the next element (the 4th). etc. Effectively it means putting + between all the elements and calculating their sum.

examples/ruby/sum_numbers_in_file_oneliner_explained.rb

filename = '../data/numbers.txt'

fh = open(filename)
lines = fh.readlines
numbers = lines.map(&:to_i)
sum = numbers.reduce :+

puts "The total is #{sum}"