From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2004-12-17T04:04:16+09:00
Subject: Re: string to (valid) filename

Hi --

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Julius Plenz wrote:

> * itsme213 <itsme213@hotmail.com> [2004-12-16]:
>> Don't know much about regexes or File/FileUtils, and am a bit stuck
>> on what might be quite simple:
>
> As I  obtain from http://www.rubycentral.com/ref/, there are no such
> methods defined in File, FileTest or File::Stat.
>
>> Is there a simple way to create a valid filename (develop on XP, but
>> would like the filenames to be valid at least on *nix as well) from
>> a string that might contain several platform-illegal filename
>> characters. The conversion could change spaces etc. to '_'.
>>
>> e.g.
>> "Animals: Fox, Wolf, and Bear".to_filename
>> #=> "animals_fox_wolf_and_bear"
>
> You could write your own:
>
> class String
>  def to_filename
>    self.to_s.downcase.tr(" ", "_").gsub(/[^\w_\.\-]+/, "")
>  end
> end

You could trim that down a little; you don't really need "self.to_s"
for a string :-)  So:

   downcase.tr(" ", "_").gsub(/[^\w.-]/, "")

or something like that.

But I don't think "to_filename" is a good name.  In Linux and (I
think) any *nix system, "Animals: Fox, Wolf, and Bear" is a perfectly
valid filename.  So another method name might be better.


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net