SHORTEST REPETITION(CodeEval)

CHALLENGE DESCRIPTION:

Write a program to determine the shortest repetition in a string. A string is said to have period p if it can be formed by concatenating one or more repetitions of another string of length p. For example, the string "xyzxyzxyzxyz" has period 3, since it is formed by 4 repetitions of the string "xyz". It also has periods 6 (two repetitions of "xyzxyz") and 12 (one repetition of "xyzxyzxyzxyz").

INPUT SAMPLE:

Your program should accept as its first argument a path to a filename. Each line will contain a string of up to 80 non-blank characters. E.g.

abcabcabcabc
bcbcbcbcbcbcbcbcbcbcbcbcbcbc
dddddddddddddddddddd
adcdefg

OUTPUT SAMPLE:

Print out the smallest period of the input string. E.g.

3
2
1
7

My Code

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w

def shortest_repetition(str)
  candidate = ''
  str.each_char do |c|
    candidate << c
    return candidate.length if repeatable?(str, candidate)
  end
end

def repeatable?(str, candidate)
  repeat_num = str.length / candidate.length
  str == candidate * repeat_num
end

ARGF.each_line do |line|
  puts shortest_repetition(line.chomp)
end