From: georgesawyer <georgesawyer2@...>
Date: 2005-01-08T08:56:27+09:00
Subject: Re: what's the Ruby way to do this?

To be frank, in my last message I was learning. Finally, I suggest this
happy medium, I hope, of readability and conciseness:

def tenWords string # First ten words, followed by ellipsis.
	p string ;return unless string # If nil.
	s =string.strip
	e =%r{   \w  \b   }x # Word-character immediately before word boundary
('end').
	last =-1 # Start before.
	10.times {return s unless last =	s.index( e ,last +1)} # If result nil.
	s[ last +1 ...s.size] =' ...' if	s.index( e ,last +1) # Another?
	s # Return.
end
p tenWords 'This is  a test sentence that I just have now made up.'
p tenWords 'This is  a test sentence that I just now made up.'
p tenWords 'This is  a test sentence that I just made up.'
p tenWords 'This is  a test sentence that I made up.'
p tenWords 'This is  a test sentence I made up.'
p tenWords 'This'
p tenWords ''
p tenWords nil
__END__
#Result:
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I just have now made up."
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I just have now ..."
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I just now made up."
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I just now made ..."
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I just made up."
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I just made up."
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I made up."
	=>"This is  a test sentence that I made up."
	=>"This is  a test sentence I made up."
	=>"This is  a test sentence I made up."
	=>"This"
	=>"This"
	=>""
	=>""
	=>nil
	=>nil