From: dblack@...
Date: 2007-06-23T20:38:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Read individual words from input?

Hi --

On Sat, 23 Jun 2007, Daniel N wrote:

> On 6/23/07, Kerio Star <keriostar@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello folks,
>> 
>> I'm a semi-newbie C++ programmer and a total newbie Ruby programmer, so
>> please bear with my incompetence.
>> 
>> In C++, as I'm sure most of you know, it's possible to read individual
>> "words" into string variables by using the stream extraction operator.
>> This operator automatically excludes any and all whitespace from the
>> value it places into the string variable--that is, in the process of
>> reading the next piece of input, it skips any leading whitespace, and
>> stops upon encountering any following whitespace.
>> 
>> I'm struggling to find an equivalent to this in Ruby. I'd like to open a
>> text file and create from it an array each of whose values is an
>> individual "word," sans whitespace.
>> 
>> For example, given a string along the lines of "  \n\tHello  \n \t My
>> \t\t\t\nName \t\n    Is  \n John", how can I cleanly extract the strings
>> "Hello", "My", "Name", "Is", and "John"?
>> 
>> Again, sorry for asking such a stupid question--just trying to get a
>> handle on what seems to be an awesome language.
>> 
>> Thanks for any help,
>> Keriostar
>
>
> Hi.  Without any file checking for existing files etc. You can use the read
> method of file.  By calling this in a block it also closes the file for you.
>
> words = File.open( "404.html" ){ |f|  f.read.split }

You can also use the class method:

   words = File.read("words.txt").split


David

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