From: "Michael W. Ryder" <_mwryder@...>
Date: 2007-05-04T11:05:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there a better way to do this?

Dan Zwell wrote:
>> I am trying to come up with a "generic" formatting routine so that I 
>> could feed it something like sform("123456789", "000-00-0000") or 
>> sform("1234567890", "(000) 000-0000") or sform("123456", "00/00/00") 
>> and it would work.  I could easily do something like you suggest, and 
>> for some cases it might be better, but I want something I can for any 
>> number of formats.  Thanks for the input.
>>
>>
> 
> welcome.
> 
> 
> require 'enumerator'
> 
> def sform(num, fmt)
>   # convert num to array (of one digit strings):
>   num = num.to_enum(:each_byte).map { |code| code.chr }
> 
>   # for each zero, replace it with a digit popped off the
>   # front of the array of numbers (or characters):
>   fmt.gsub(/0/) { num.shift }
> end
> 
> 
> dan
> 

Your method is much better than my C style one.  With a little work to 
handle exceptions it should generally work.  The only problem I have 
found so far is that it doesn't handle periods in the number string 
properly -- i.e. sform("12345.67", "$00,000.00") returns $12,345..6" 
instead of $12,345.67".  Something for me to work on.  Thanks for the code.