From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2006-01-25T00:48:52+09:00
Subject: Re: remove non-ASCII characters in a string

Dave Burt <dave@burt.id.au> wrote:
> 
>   tranmap.inject(self) do |str, (utf8, asc)|
>     p [utf8, asc]
>     str.gsub(utf8, asc)
>   end
> end
> end
> 
> "I�t�rn�ti�n�liz�ti�n".utf8_trans_unaccent #=> "Internationalizaetion" 

# one time preprocessing
INTL, ASC = "", ""
tranmap.each {|k,v|
  INTL << k
  ASC << v
}

# quicker than repeated gsubs:
str.tr(INTL, ASC)

martin