From: Gennady Bystritksy <gfb@...>
Date: 2005-01-08T07:49:43+09:00
Subject: Re: what's the Ruby way to do this?

Douglas Livingstone wrote:
>>>def snippet(thought)
>>> thought.split[0..9].join(" ") + "..."
>>>end
>>
>>is more the "Ruby Way"
>>
> 
> 
> Shorter too.
> 

Works differently, though ;-) -- it adds "..." to any result, while the 
regexp version adds "..." only if a phrase has been truncated. To make 
it equivalent non-regexp one without using termporary storage, I could 
come up with the following:

def snippet(thought, n = 10)
   [ thought.split[0, n+1] ].map { |a|
     a[0, n] + (a[n] && '...').to_a
   }.join(' ')
end

Gennady.