From: MonkeeSage <MonkeeSage@...>
Date: 2007-12-27T11:24:57+09:00
Subject: Re: array.index(obj, start)?

On Dec 26, 12:48 pm, Esmail <ebonak_de...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> array.index(obj) will return the index of the item in the array.
>
> I am unable to find a version of this that allows one to specify
> a starting index in place of the default 0 start, is there such a
> function?
>
> Let's say I have a text file that contains multiple records of some sort.
> Each record has a unique identifier, but ends with the same character,
> say '<'. So, the identifiers are unique, but then end of record markers
> are not.
>
> I read this file into an array of strings and am trying to delete
> one or more of these records. The records may not be in order of
> deletion. My idea is to set the given range to nil and then use compact!
> to delete the lines when I'm done with the "deletions".
>
> So, one sequence might be like this:
>
> start=ar.index(starting_name) will give me the starting index
> end=ar.index('<', start)    would give me the immediate next
>                              end tag (there may be others.)
> ar[start...end]=nil
> ar.compact!
>
> Comments/suggestions? I really like Ruby but I am not yet
> proficient with it.
>
> Thanks.

s = "stuff<more stuff<this is sure alot of stuff"
a = s.split("<")
a.delete_at(1)
s = a.join("<")
p s # => "stuff<this is sure alot of stuff"

Regards,
Jordan