From: Phil Meier <phil.meier@...>
Date: 2007-08-16T16:15:02+09:00
Subject: Re: removing quotes in a string

Grace Xue schrieb:
> Thanks for all that everyone. I'm a bit lost after a whole afternoon of 
> trail and error.  What I'm trying to do is read a csv. file that has 
> different rows and multiple coloumns. The way it's currently done is 
> putting each row into an array, and retrieve each column using the 
> element number.
> 
> For example, a file with a line like this (CSV)
> 16/08/07,working hard
> 
> My codes are like this:
> for row in csv_rows
>    begin
>         parsed[]
>         CSV.parse_row(row, 0, parsed)
>         date_string = parsed[0]         => 16/08/07
>         description = parsed[1]         => working hard
>    end
> 
> The problem I have is some file come in as
> "16/08/07,working hard"
> 
> I have a feeling that I need to remove the quotes before the 
> CSV.parse_row line. But how?
> 
> Thanks

csv_rows.each do | row |
     parsed[]
     if row[0] == ?"
       row = row[1..-2]
     end
     CSV.parse_row(row, 0, parsed)
     date_string = parsed[0]         => 16/08/07
     description = parsed[1]         => working hard
end

You have to check row before parsing it. If it has a " at position 0 (at 
the beginning) just remove the first and the last character of the string.

BR Phil