From: "trans.  (T. Onoma)" <transami@...>
Date: 2004-10-10T14:44:22+09:00
Subject: Re: split with negative limit

On Sunday 10 October 2004 12:54 am, Mark Hubbart wrote:
| On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 13:18:48 +0900, trans.  (T. Onoma)
|
| <transami@runbox.com> wrote:
| > Word o' warning. I just put this comment in a program:
| >
| >   lines = self.split("\n",-1)  # boy oh boy was that -1 a pain to figure
| > out!
|
| ???
|
|   str = "one\n\ntwo\n\nthree"
|     ==>"one\n\ntwo\n\nthree"
|   str.split("\n")
|     ==>["one", "", "two", "", "three"]
|   str.split("\n",-1)
|     ==>["one", "", "two", "", "three"]
|   RUBY_VERSION
|     ==>"1.9.0"
|
| What did you gain by adding the -1 in? I tried this same thing using
| ruby 1.6.8, got the same results.

irb(main):001:0> str = "one\n\ntwo\n\nthree\n\n"
=> "one\n\ntwo\n\nthree\n\n"
irb(main):002:0> str.split("\n")
=> ["one", "", "two", "", "three"]
irb(main):003:0> str.split("\n",-1)
=> ["one", "", "two", "", "three", "", ""]

| Null field filtering is normally only done when no arguments are
| passed, or with the special case " " argument.

Without the -1 I was loosing all my remaining blank lines.

(using 1.8.2)

T.