One might have noticed that String#each is no more present in Ruby 1.9:

1.9.1 :002 > "hemanth".each
NoMethodError: undefined method `each' for "hemanth":String

Lately, was working on a huge code base where code had String#each assuming it will always get an array, as Ruby 1.8 has String#each and also Array#each, but it does not get Strings at times so had to fix them.

Methods to fix:

1. Check and cast:

if !obj.kind_of?(Array)
  acl_descs = ["#{obj}"]
end

This was a bit tedious, some ‘sed’ could have helped, but stopped it there!

2. Check and Create:

unless String.respond_to?(:each)
  class String
    def each
      self.split.each { |line| yield line }
    end
  end
end

This was worth doing, but was in search of an easier way!

3. Aliasing for the win!

String#each_line is the method that helped a lot, as it was present in both 1.8 and 1.9.

class String 
  alias :each :each_line
end

Finally, removal of String#each from 1.9 is really meaningful, as it was ugly: string.each { |each_what???| }

So, Ruby 1.9 along with each_line has each_word and each_char.