From: Ross Bamford <rossrt@...>
Date: 2006-05-06T03:49:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Noob Question - String Manipulation...

On Sat, 2006-05-06 at 02:28 +0900, Joe Cairns wrote:
> Hey, I'm pretty new to Ruby and am trying to absorb the "ruby way" of 
> things as much as I can.  What's the best way to solve this problem:
> 
> I have a string that contains html formating.  All I want is the plain 
> text.
> 

There's more to this than meets the eye - it's often best to hand off
the hard stuff to someone else :) 

def fetchtext(uri)
  `lynx --dump #{uri}`
end

puts fetchtext('www.google.com')
# =>
#                     [1]Personalised Home | [2]Sign in
#
#                                   Google
#
#    Web    [3]Images    [4]Groups    [5]News    [6]Froogle    [7]more 損
#
# ... [snipped] ...

-- 
Ross Bamford - rosco@roscopeco.REMOVE.co.uk