From: Phrogz <phrogz@...>
Date: 2007-12-05T00:50:20+09:00
Subject: Re: hash

On Dec 4, 8:19 am, Phrogz <phr...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Dec 4, 7:30 am, Johnathan Smith <stu...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > iv started writing a class which reads the data from a text file and
> > counts the number of Tags
>
> > however im having a struggle as I want to split the tag and the data
> > into a hash i.e the Tag is the index and the data is the rest

Here's another variation:

# Could be IO.read
info = Hash[ *DATA.read.split( /\n\n+/ ).map{ |chunk|
  pieces = chunk.scan /^(\w+): (.+)/
  first  = pieces.shift
  raise "Uhm...I was assuming Tag comes first" unless first[0] ==
"Tag"
  [ first[1], Hash[ *pieces.flatten ]  ]
}.flatten ]

require 'pp'
pp info
#=> {"ref4 "=>{"Author"=>"Jones, M B", "Type"=>"Book "},
#=>  "ref3 "=>{"Author"=>"Williams, M ", "Type"=>"Conference Paper "},
#=>  "ref2 "=>{"Author"=>"Smith, J ", "Type"=>"Journal "},
#=>  "ref1 "=>{"Author"=>"Little, S R ", "Type"=>"Book "}}

__END__
Tag: ref1
Type: Book
Author: Little, S R

Tag: ref2
Type: Journal
Author: Smith, J

Tag: ref3
Type: Conference Paper
Author: Williams, M

Tag: ref4
Type: Book
Author: Jones, M B