From: Mark Hubbart <discord@...>
Date: 2004-07-15T02:21:07+09:00
Subject: Re: String.split


On Jul 14, 2004, at 2:51 AM, Lloyd Zusman wrote:

> Mark Hubbart <discord@mac.com> writes:
>
>> On Jul 13, 2004, at 9:03 PM, Bill Kelly wrote:
>>>
>>> [ ... ]
>>>
>>>   /(?<!^\s+)\s+/  ...uh....
>>>
>>> ...Maybe there's another way to do it... If anybody knows
>>> I'd like to learn...
>>
>> as of now, this works:
>>
>> irb(main):001:0> "  spaces  of  doom  ".split(nil)
>> => ["spaces", "of", "doom"]
>>
>> Why shouldn't nil be the only special case? If the $variable is set to
>> nil, it uses this kind of split anyway.
>>
>> And it's no more characters to type than " " ;)
>>
>> Mark
>
> ... and the following has even fewer characters to type:
>
>   irb(main):001:0> "  spaces  of  doom  ".split()
>   => ["spaces", "of", "doom"]

... which is the same as:

   irb(main):001:0> "  spaces  of  doom  ".split
   => ["spaces", "of", "doom"]

However, I was mistakenly thinking that #split(nil) would be exactly 
the same as #split(" ")... but it isn't. I tried setting $; to "." and 
it no longer worked. It seems that it should, though: when you want the 
default behavior of #split, you set $; to nil. it seems rather logical 
that #split(nil) should split using that default behavior. Oh well :)

cheers,
Mark