Splitting a string into words using multiple possible separators

ruby-talk
1

Hi,

I'm using ruby 1.8.5

i have an input string whose 'words' are separated by whitespace and/or
commas and/or semicolons

I want to remove the separators (,;\s) and place each 'word' into an
array

e.g.,

this string => 'my uncle, jumped over;

the moon'

would be converted into an array of elements ['my', 'uncle', 'jumped',
'over', 'the', 'moon']

currently, i'm doing this (in this example, rx_input holds the string
and rx_numbers is the array):

    rx_input.gsub!(/[,;\s]/, ' ')

    rx_input.squeeze!(' ')

    rx_numbers = rx_input.split(' ')

is there a simpler /more elegant/ way of doing this (accounting for the
possibility of double-spaces, etc)?

tia

2

Perhap:

string = 'my uncle, jumped over;

the moon'

a = string.scan(/\b\w+/)
["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"]

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Danese [mailto:pdanese@Rib-x.com]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 10:46 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: splitting a string into words using multiple possible
separators

Hi,

I'm using ruby 1.8.5

i have an input string whose 'words' are separated by whitespace and/or
commas and/or semicolons

I want to remove the separators (,;\s) and place each 'word' into an
array

e.g.,

this string => 'my uncle, jumped over;

the moon'

would be converted into an array of elements ['my', 'uncle', 'jumped',
'over', 'the', 'moon']

currently, i'm doing this (in this example, rx_input holds the string
and rx_numbers is the array):

    rx_input.gsub!(/[,;\s]/, ' ')

    rx_input.squeeze!(' ')

    rx_numbers = rx_input.split(' ')

is there a simpler /more elegant/ way of doing this (accounting for the
possibility of double-spaces, etc)?

tia

3

Or

irb(main):001:0> string = 'my uncle, jumped over; the moon'
=> "my uncle, jumped over; the moon"
irb(main):002:0> string.scan /\w+/
=> ["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"]
irb(main):003:0> string.split /\W+/
=> ["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"]

Kind regards

  robert

···

On 20.04.2007 17:05, Doan, Alex wrote:

Perhap:

string = 'my uncle, jumped over;

the moon'

a = string.scan(/\b\w+/)
["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"]

4

string.split(/[^a-zA-Z0-9\-]/)

Robert Klemme wrote:

···

On 20.04.2007 17:05, Doan, Alex wrote:

Perhap:

string = 'my uncle, jumped over;

the moon'

a = string.scan(/\b\w+/)
["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"]

Or

irb(main):001:0> string = 'my uncle, jumped over; the moon'
=> "my uncle, jumped over; the moon"
irb(main):002:0> string.scan /\w+/
=> ["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"]
irb(main):003:0> string.split /\W+/
=> ["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"]

Kind regards

    robert