From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2007-09-18T18:35:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Creating Arrays

On Sep 18, 2:39 am, "Ronald Fischer" <ronald.fisc...@venyon.com>
wrote:
> > I have a .csz file created from a spreadsheet which contains
> > 666 rows and 19 columns. What I would like to do is read the
> > csz file into an array in ruby and store that array as a set
> > of columns and rows (like in excel).
>
> [snip]
>
> > My question is basically how do I do what I want to do?... It
> > is difficult for a new starter but I suspect you guys would
> > know it inside out!
>
> Since you want to mimic the spreadsheet idiom (a table of rows
> and columns), I suggest you create an "array of arrays".
[...]

class String
  def csv
    if include? '"'
      ary =
        "#{chomp},".scan(
        /\G"([^"]*(?:""[^"]*)*)",|\G([^,"]*),/ )
      raise "Bad csv record:\n#{self}"  if $' != ""
      ary.map{|a| a[1] || a[0].gsub(/""/,'"') }
    else
      ary = chomp.split( /,/, -1)
      ##   "".csv ought to be [""], not [], just as
      ##   ",".csv is ["",""].
      if [] == ary
        [""]
      else
        ary
      end
    end
  end
end

array = nil
File.open('junk'){|f|
  array = f.readlines.map{|s| s.csv }
}
p array