From: Albert Wagner <alwagner@...>
Date: 2001-10-14T12:47:43+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:22506] Re: extracting from delimited text files

Thanks, Sean.  
I wrestled with scan for awhile but couldn't figure out how to do it.  I'll 
have to brood on your code for awhile.  I understand what recursion is, but 
not in this context.  Could you explain about scan doing recursion?

> Hi Albert,
>
> The CVS module is probably the easiest, but since I love regexps so much,
> here's another option.
>
> The "scan" method actually does recursion for you.  There are a number of
> ways you can manage this, but the easiest is:
>
>         irb(main):165:0> string
>         "\"aaa\",xxx,\"ccc\",,\"a,b\",\"fff\",,,"
>         irb(main):166:0> string.scan(/".*?"|[^,]+/)
>         ["\"aaa\"", "xxx", "\"ccc\"", "\"a,b\"", "\"fff\""]
>
> to just return the data, or
>
>         irb(main):167:0> string.scan(/".*?"|[^,]*/)
>         ["\"aaa\"", "", "xxx", "", "\"ccc\"", "", "", "\"a,b\"", "",
> "\"fff\"", "", "", "", ""]
>
> to maintain your null data points.
>
> --- SER
>
>
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