From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2007-12-02T19:52:31+09:00
Subject: Re: file renaming/parsing help

On Dec 2, 2007 2:44 AM, Mike Mr. <saltydog4791@gmail.com> wrote:
> First of all let me say that I am an absolute newb when it comes to
> rails.  I am simply trying to work on an existing script that was
> written by someone else.
>
> I need to take a filename that will always have a similar name and turn
> it into an rfc2822 compliant line for an xml file.  Here is what I have
> so far but I am absolutely lost as you can see.  sad
>
> The filenames will always be the same, e.g. November 15,2007.mp3 or
> September 7,2008.mp3, etc.  One thing I am concerned about is the day
> since sometimes it will be a single digit and sometimes a double digit,
> although I am sure their is a way around that too.
>
> I would love if someone could shed some light on this for me.  I might
> even learn something in the process.  smile
>
> #The goal is turn "November 15,2007.mp3" into "Wed, 15 Nov 2007 19:00:00
> GMT"
> #
> #So far the output below gives me Wed, Nov15
>
>
> filename = "November 15, 2007.mp3"
> puts "Wed, " + ( filename[0,3]) + ( filename[-12,2])

You could make your life easy by using a Date object and the #parse method...

str = "November 15, 2007.mp3"
date_str = str.split('.')[0]
d = Date.parse(date_str)  ##### parse it
puts d.strftime "%a, %e %b %Y.mp3" ##### output it the way you want

You can add other formats too (see #strftime and look at the source)
Todd