From: Mark Sparshatt <msparshatt@...>
Date: 2004-06-23T05:03:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie question - how to replace multiple whitespace within astring?

Brian Tully wrote:

>on 6/22/04 3:36 PM, Joel VanderWerf at vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Brian Tully wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Should I use state.squeeze(" ") to ensure that it always returns the state
>>>even if nothing was changed? squeeze! seems to return nil if nothing needs
>>>to be changed.
>>>      
>>>
>>str.squeeze! is destructive (changes the String object referred to by
>>str), and str.squeeze is not. So it just depends on whether you need to
>>keep the original string intact (I'd guess not).
>>    
>>
>
>
>Hmmm I'm a little hazy...
>
>I want Ruby to strip out any instances of multiple whitespace and return the
>"correct" string. I also want it to return the string regardless of whether
>the squeeze function modified it.
>
>So in these examples I would hope for the following:
>
>     @state = @user['state'].squeeze(" ")
>
>if @user['state'] was originally "New   York" I would hope that the above
>would set @state to "New York".
>
>In addition if @user['state'] was originally "California" I would hope that
>the above would still set @state to "California".
>
>
>  
>
this is correct

@user["state"] = "New   york"
@state = @user["state"].squeeze
p @state #=> "New york"

@user["state"] = "California"
@state = @user["state"].squeeze
p @state #=> "California"

>squeeze! - Squeezes str in place, returning either str, or  nil if no
>changes were made.
>
>I interpret this as if no changes were made "nil" will be returned, so in my
>example of "California" wouldn't this set @state to nil?
>
>  
>
correct

you would use squeeze if you wanted to modify @user["state"]. In which 
case the following lines are about equivilent

@user["state"] = @user["state"].squeeze
@user["state"].squeeze!

--
Mark Sparshatt