From: dblack@...
Date: 2006-06-29T02:02:10+09:00
Subject: Re: remove all illegal chars form string

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Hi --

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006, thomas coopman wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Is there a simple way to remove all but the legal chars from a string.  w=
here the legal chars are for example: a-z A-Z 0-9
> So everything should be removed from the string but these characters.
> "exam@p  Le3|=A7" --> "exampLe"
>
> I don't know very much about regular expressions, so I don't know if it's=
 possible with sub or gsub.  My first Idea was to loop over the string and =
check every character but I wondered if there is something more simple or b=
etter.

You can make a character class that contains what you want, and then
get rid of everything that doesn't match it, using a negated character
class:

   irb(main):004:0> str =3D "exam@p  Le3|=C2=A7"
   =3D> "exam@p  Le3|\302\247"
   irb(main):005:0> str.gsub(/[^A-Za-z0-9]/, '')
   =3D> "exampLe3"

(The '3' disappeared in your example but assuming you want 0-9 it
would actually remain.)


David

--=20
David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net)
Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com)

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