Regular Expression issue

ruby-talk
1

Hi; I created a program that needs to parse through multiple files
looking for users and groups. The users are listed with Employee
Number and Name and then Groups. The format is as follows:

C008658 Smith,John
C009525 Smith, Jane
C014259 Doe, Joe
C044888 Doe, Jack
*******************************************************(yes, the stars
are part of the file)

Outsource Access Control Sheet - Finance
Project Manager: Gilmore, Happy (0083234)
Date of first approval: Not approved
Date of last update: First Update
Accounts:
Type: LAN
Groups: Yes-Some-Type-of_Group

I need to capture, the employee ID, Name, and Groups. My Current
program is not working to well. Here is ONE of the version of the
program I am working on to get it to work.

Cemployee=Array.new
CemployeeID=Array.new
CemployeeName=Array.new
counter=0
CemployeeS=" "
File.open("D:\\Finance.txt").each { |user|
  while user.scan(/^[*]+/)

    CemployeeID[counter]=user.scan(/^[C]\d+/)
    puts CemployeeID[counter]
    CemployeeName[counter]=user.scan(/\s\w+[,]\w+/)
    puts CemployeeName[counter]
    counter+=1
  end

  }

2

Instead of capturing each data element one at a time with separate
user.scan's, it's easier to create a match object from a single
regular expression that contains match groups. You can then access
the results of the match group by using $1, $2, etc.
Try this:

Cemployee=Array.new
CemployeeID=Array.new
CemployeeName=Array.new
counter=0
CemployeeS=" "
File.open("D:\\finance.txt").each { |user|
  m = /^([C]\d+)\s(\w+,\s?\w+)/.match(user)
  if m
      CemployeeID[counter]=$1
      CemployeeName[counter]=$2
      puts "Name: #{CemployeeName[counter]} ID:
#{CemployeeID[counter]}"
      counter+=1
    end
}

Hope that helps-

Brian