From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-12-02T11:24:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Labelled text file parsing...

On Dec 1, 2005, at 7:57 PM, CBlair1986 wrote:

> Hi. What I'd like to do is to take a file like so:
> ---
> Apple
> Color: Red
> Peel: Yes
> Has Core: Yes
>
> Orange
> Color: Orange
> Peel: Yes
> Has Core: No
> ---
> and go through it, line by line, assigning the 'Apple' and 'Orange'
> lines to a name attribute on different hashes, and then using the name
> before the colons such as 'Color' and 'Peel' as keys for the  
> respective
> values.
>
> I'm just asking for a bit of help and guidance, as I'm still not very
> keen on using regular expressions that comfortably and all.
>
> Thanks to anyone who helps!

I'm in a terrible rush, but see if this code gets you going.  Ask  
questions if you have them and I'll answer later...

James Edward Gray II

#!/usr/local/bin/ruby -w

require "pp"

data = Hash.new

DATA.each_line("") do |para|
   if para.sub!(/\A *(.+?) *\n/, "")
     data[$1] = Hash[*para.split("\n").map { |line| line.split(/: 
\s*/) }.flatten]
   end
end

pp data

__END__
Apple
Color: Red
Peel: Yes
Has Core: Yes

Orange
Color: Orange
Peel: Yes
Has Core: No