From: "Charles L. Snyder" <csnyder1@...>
Date: 2005-06-10T13:15:28+09:00
Subject: newbieQ: new array from old array w regex

Hi,

As an exercise to learn to use Ruby, I am trying to search large xml files
to extract just the zip codes from the author address nodes in the file:

require "rexml/document"
include REXML
doc = Document.new File.new("JPS.xml")
mylist2=mylist=[]
doc.elements.each("RECORDS/RECORD/AUTHOR_ADDRESS") {|element| mylist.push
element.text}
puts mylist.each {|m| /b\d{5}-\d{4}\b|\b\d{5}\b/.match(m)}

This only gives me the entire contents of the address node - how do I
extract only the zip codes (preferably putting them in an array). My next
step is to end up with a hash table of unique zipcodes and their frequency
of occurrence...

Thanks

CLS