To get data form the user, Ruby provides the gets (“get string”) method.
When using it, the program wait for the user input and the press of the enter key. This last action leaves a newline character at the end of the string.
irb :001 > animal = gets
Flamingo
=> "Flamingo\n"
To get rid of it, we can chain the chomp method to gets:
irb :001 > animal = gets.chomp
Flamingo
=> "Flamingo"
Note that, as its name indicates, the gets method always returns a String object.
irb :001 > num = gets.chomp
9
=> "9"
irb :002 > num = gets.chomp.to_i
9
=> 9