From: "Doan, Alex" <alex.doan@...>
Date: 2007-04-21T00:05:52+09:00
Subject: Re: splitting a string into words using multiple possible separators

Perhap:
>> string = 'my uncle, jumped    over;

the moon'

a = string.scan(/\b\w+/)
["my", "uncle", "jumped", "over", "the", "moon"] 

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Danese [mailto:pdanese@Rib-x.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 10:46 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: splitting a string into words using multiple possible
separators

Hi,

 

I'm using ruby 1.8.5

 

i have an input string whose 'words' are separated by whitespace and/or
commas and/or semicolons

 

I want to remove the separators (,;\s) and place each 'word' into an
array

 

e.g.,

 

this string => 'my uncle, jumped    over; 

the moon'

 

would be converted into an array of elements ['my', 'uncle', 'jumped',
'over', 'the', 'moon']

 

 

currently, i'm doing this (in this example, rx_input holds the string
and rx_numbers is the array):

 

    rx_input.gsub!(/[,;\s]/, ' ')

    rx_input.squeeze!(' ')

    rx_numbers = rx_input.split(' ')

 

is there a simpler /more elegant/ way of doing this (accounting for the
possibility of double-spaces, etc)?

 

tia