From: Phrogz <gavin@...>
Date: 2007-04-05T03:05:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Problem Extracting Array Values

On Apr 4, 11:34 am, Brian Candler <B.Cand...@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 01:05:44AM +0900, Dustin Anderson wrote:
> > is there a simple way in ruby to build an array from a string like this:
>
> > block1,block2,block3 to an array that is like this:
>
> > ["block1", "block2", "block3"]
>
> I always thought that Object#inspect could be considered as a (crude) form
> of object serialisation, and it would be really useful to have a reverse
> "uninspect" operation to recreate the object from it again. Has anyone
> written such a parser?

irb(main):001:0> a1 = ["foo",/bar/,42,false,nil]
=> ["foo", /bar/, 42, false, nil]
irb(main):002:0> s = a1.inspect
=> "[\"foo\", /bar/, 42, false, nil]"
irb(main):003:0> a2 = eval(s)
=> ["foo", /bar/, 42, false, nil]
irb(main):004:0> a1 == a2
=> true

So:

class String
  def uninspect
    eval(self)
  end
end

:)