From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-03-08T01:19:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Can someone point me in the right direction? Pipe Delimited Files & Hashes...

On Mar 7, 2007, at 10:09 AM, Samantha wrote:

> James Edward Gray II wrote:
>>> If someone could point me in the right direction, of possible  
>>> libraries that would help or the such, I'd love to go read there  
>>> and study on it and try to figure it out.  Not asking for  
>>> answers, just asking for resources. :)
>>
>> The standard CSV library will do the parsing for you, but this  
>> case looks very simple so you probably don't need it.  However, if  
>> the first row of the file has the field names, it might be worth  
>> looking at FasterCSV which will build the Hashes for you:
> Thanks!  The first row does not have field names, however, I'm sure  
> I could add them.

Actually, FasterCSV plans for that too.  I should have said that.   
Here's a taste:

 >> require "rubygems"
=> false
 >> require "faster_csv"
=> true
 >> csv = <<END_CSV
Book|Programming|Good Stuff.
Book|Home Improvement|Sounds like work.
END_CSV
=> "Book|Programming|Good Stuff.\nBook|Home Improvement|Sounds like  
work.\n"
 >> FCSV.parse(csv, :col_sep => "|", :headers => [:cat, :sub, :des])  
do |row|
?>   p row.to_hash
 >> end
{:sub=>"Programming", :cat=>"Book", :des=>"Good Stuff."}
{:sub=>"Home Improvement", :cat=>"Book", :des=>"Sounds like work."}
=> nil

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II