# Doubts about an example in Poignant Guide

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/doubts-about-an-example-in-poignant-guide/99322>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 21, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/doubts-about-an-example-in-poignant-guide/99322 "2006-07-21T18:35:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![damaris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@damaris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damaris)\
**Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/doubts-about-an-example-in-poignant-guide/99322/1 "2006-07-21T18:35:31Z")

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Hi,  
I’m reading “Why’s guide to ruby” and I have two doubts about the  
example of Endertromb, mindreaders, etc.

Firstly, He creates the class “MindReader” where he uses  
“EnderTromb::scan\_for\_sentence”. However, there is no EnderTromb class  
in the manual.

Even though I can skip that part and initialize the sentence “manually”,  
I’ve found that he uses a mind.read method. That is, a “read” method on  
a string. And it gives me back an error.

Has anybody come across these errors? If so, I will be pleased to know  
how can I solve them 🙂

Thanks  
PT: And thanks for being a vivid forum! You’re really really useful for  
people starting like me!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![damaris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@damaris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damaris)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 11:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/doubts-about-an-example-in-poignant-guide/99322/2 "2006-07-25T23:51:51Z")

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Yes, I guess you are completely right 🙂 I was trying to give life to  
EnderTromb planet myself and I was getting crazy 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![damaris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@damaris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damaris)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 5:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/doubts-about-an-example-in-poignant-guide/99322/3 "2006-07-22T05:49:59Z")

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On Jul 21, 2006, at 12:35 PM, Damaris F. wrote:

> I’ve found that he uses a mind.read method. That is, a “read”  
> method on  
> a string. And it gives me back an error.
> 
> Has anybody come across these errors? If so, I will be pleased to know  
> how can I solve them 🙂
> 
> Thanks  
> PT: And thanks for being a vivid forum! You’re really really useful  
> for  
> people starting like me!

\_why may have something to say here, but I’m not sure why you’re  
saying mind is a string. I don’t see the actual type of mind defined  
anywhere. As for EnderTromb, it’s included from endertromb.rb, it  
says. So it’s defined there.

I think part of it is that you have to relax a little and give into  
the programming-as-language idea. You can dig down if you have too,  
but for an example like this, you don’t have to. You know what  
mind.read does just by looking at it. It reads minds of course!  
How? Leave that up to the author 🙂  
-Mat