From: Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb@...>
Date: 2007-09-17T01:51:01+09:00
Subject: Re: IO#gets(sep_string) usage

On 9/16/07, ZyLo <Klauer@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all.  I'm trying to use the gets function, only I want to read
> in a file and make separators any sort of punctuation(",", ":", "\n",
> etc.).
>
> My problem is trying to understand how the sep_string=$/ option is
> supposed to work:
>
> ios.gets(sep_string=$/)
>
> How can I specify what sep_string is so that when I do something for a
> while loop on gets, I can get each word instead of a line of text, or
> lines of text with various punctuation I don't want?
>
> A second note, I'm not sure what $/ is supposed to mean.  Is that the
> separator for newline(which i thought was \n)?
>

$/ is the 'output separator' global. It defaults to \n.
What that syntax is saying is that you can pass a separator string to
IO#gets, and it will use it. If you don't pass it one, it will use
whatever $/ is set to.