From: George Ogata <george.ogata@...>
Date: 2007-03-17T14:53:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Splitting A String

On 3/17/07, Andrew Stewart <boss@airbladesoftware.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> What's a (good) way to convert this:
>
>    'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
>
> into this:
>
>    [ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?
>
> Thanks!

If you're looking for shell-quoting-like behavior, I actually think
it's more appropriate to use shellwords for this:

irb(main):001:0> require 'shellwords'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> Shellwords.shellwords 'a quick "brown fox" jumps
"over the lazy" dog'
=> ["a", "quick", "brown fox", "jumps", "over the lazy", "dog"]

It will also handle sloshing:

irb(main):003:0> Shellwords.shellwords 'a\ b c'
=> ["a b", "c"]

And distinguish between single and double quotes (for better or for worse):

irb(main):004:0> Shellwords.shellwords %{"a\\"a"}
=> ["a\"a"]
irb(main):005:0> Shellwords.shellwords %{'a\\'}
=> ["a\\"]

Shellwords is in the standard library.

Regards,
George.