From: dblack@...
Date: 2007-08-11T22:14:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Split a string based on change of character

Hi --

On Sat, 11 Aug 2007, Andrew Savige wrote:

> For a string "ZBBBCZZ", I want to produce a list ["Z", "BBB", "C", "ZZ"]
> That is, break the string into pieces based on change of character.
>
> Though this works:
>
>  s = "ZBBBCZZ"
>  x = s.scan(/((.)\2*)/).map {|i| i[0]}
>
> I'm new to Ruby and am interested to learn if there is a better way to
> do it.

Probably not better, but just for fun, here's a way using the strscan
extension.  I'd be very interested if anyone can get this to be less
clunky -- in particular, the - [""] at the end.

require 'strscan'
s = StringScanner.new("AABCCCDAAAEE")

s.string.split(//).inject([]) {|a,b| a << s.scan_until(/(?!#{b})/) } - [""]

=> ["AA", "B", "CCC", "D", "AAA", "EE"]


David

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