Say you have a complex object like:
state = {a: 1, b: '2', c: [3, 4, 5]}
And you want to display it nicely to standard output. Then you do:
require 'pp'
pp state
# {:a=>1, :b=>"2", :c=>[3, 4, 5]}
Amazing! But you might want to save that into a string so it can be used later,
like in the ouput of your logger. For this usecase you can call
.pretty_inspect on any object and pass that result around.
result = state.pretty_inspect
puts result
# {:a=>1, :b=>"2", :c=>[3, 4, 5]}
This should have the same effect as pp state but now you can do stuff with it:
require 'logger'
logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
logger.warn("Result is: #{result}")
# W, [2020-07-22T18:48:55.386144 #16069] WARN -- : Result is: {:a=>1, :b=>"2", :c=>[3, 4, 5]}