From: Mohit Sindhwani <mo_mail@...>
Date: 2008-06-03T01:27:09+09:00
Subject: Re: split a string at tab positions

suresh wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am a newbie to ruby and when i tried to split a string at tab
> positions, it didnt work. Could you please tell me where I am going
> wrong? Code is pasted.
>
> #!/usr/bin/ruby1.9
> s = "a	b"
> ss = s.split('\t')
> puts ss[0]
>
> It just prints the entire line without splitting...
>
> suresh
>
>
>   

The problem is the '\t' - anything inside single quotes is not touched 
by Ruby.  It needs to be "\t" (double quotes) for it to be interpreted 
as a tab character by Ruby.

In my mind, this is the #1 problem that C programmers have in Ruby - it 
just seems natural to split at a character \t and C programmers (incl 
me) write it as '\t'.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Mohit.
6/3/2008 | 12:24 AM.