From: Raul Parolari <raulparolari@...>
Date: 2007-11-24T03:23:19+09:00
Subject: Re: New at regexp and Ruby need help on parsing a string.


Gabra Kadabra wrote:
> Raul Parolari wrote:
>> 
>> str.scan(/ (and|not) (.*?) (?= \band|\bnot|$) /x) do |k, v|
>>   smoking_table[k.to_sym].push(v.strip)
>> end
> 
> I think Raul just convinced me that I really need to start a deep 
> relationship with regexp.
> This is magic in one row, readable in three.
> 
> Thanks.

I totally agree with you; this is not a subject that you learn 'just 
trying' or even reading the forum. Start with calm from the basics with 
a good book, and soon those funny hieroglyphics will become your 
friends.

By the way, the code above did not deal with 'notorious bad girls' (I 
mean words beginning with 'not'); I had only checked for an absence of 
prefix, not of suffix. So, here it is (the '\b' before and after a word 
makes sure that it is indeed a 'word'):

str = "and stuff and nice things not notorious bad girls not greasy boys 
and girslsandboys"

h = { :and => [], :not => [] }

str.scan(/ (and|not) (.*?) (?= (\b(and|not)\b)|$)  /x) do |k, v|
  h[k.to_sym].push(v.strip) }
end

p h # => {:and=>["stuff", "nice things", "girslsandboys"],
    # :not=>["notorious bad girls", "greasy boys"]}


Peter Vanderhaden wrote
> Interesting solution.  One question, how did you print the output?  I'm 
> a newbie and the output I got when I tried your solution came out ..

By default, the puts/print methods for hashes concatenate keys and 
values; you can use 'p' (or 'puts inspect') to see the hash. If you are 
in irb, just writing the name of the hash will show it to you.

Regards
Raul

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