From: Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb@...>
Date: 2006-01-07T16:05:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Sippet needed to convert from a string

On 1/6/06, Tom Reilly <w3gat@nwlagardener.org> wrote:
> Snippit needed
>
> given some option variables
>
> c1 = 0
> c2 = 0
> c3 = 0
> c4 = 0
>
> given a string (a set of pairs of options) which could be read from
> MYSQL or a file
>
> paramString =  '"c1" 0 "c3" 1 "c2" "y" "c4" "v"'
>
> such that:
>
> c1 = 0
> c2 = "y"
> c3 = 1
> and c4 = "v"
>
> at the end of the procedure.
>
> I just can't figure out how to do this with RUBY.
>

There's no way yet to "meta-programmatically" set local variables.  If
you're OK with instance variables, you could replace the code I'm
about to paste with calls to instance_variable_set.

Here's one way, using a Hash:

irb(main):001:0> require 'enumerator'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> params = "c1 0 c3 1 c2 y c4 v"
=> "c1 0 c3 1 c2 y c4 v"
irb(main):003:0> h = {}
=> {}
irb(main):004:0> params.split.each_slice(2) {|key, val| h[key] = val}
=> nil
irb(main):005:0> h
=> {"c1"=>"0", "c2"=>"y", "c3"=>"1", "c4"=>"v"}
irb(main):006:0>