From: "Eric I." <rubytraining@...>
Date: 2008-07-19T12:38:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Suggestions for a parsing strategy?

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 10:59 PM, Robb <Robb.Shecter@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have input strings that can look like this:
>
>  Common, Commerc(e, ial)
>
> I need to parse these into the three words that this represents:
>
>  Common, Commerce, Commercial.

This code does a lot of what you describe, providing the parenthetical
only appears at the end.

====

s = "Common, Commerc(e, ial), Computer, Con(ic, ehead, temporary)"

def parse_word_list(s)
  s.scan(/(\w+)(\((.*?)\))?/).map { |root, junk, suffixes|
    [root, suffixes && suffixes.split(", ")]
  }
end

list = parse_word_list(s)

# see what's produced
p list

# use it to generate all words
list.each do |root, suffix_list|
  if suffix_list
    suffix_list.each do |suffix|
      puts "#{root}#{suffix}"
    end
  else
    puts root
  end
end

====

Hope that helps,

Eric

====

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