From: andrew_queisser@... (andrew queisser)
Date: 2002-02-01T06:54:09+09:00
Subject: Newbie question

What's the best way to return a substring that consists of the first 4
words, if words are comma-delimited, e.g.:

line = "1,2,3,4,5,6,7"
line.GetFirstFour

should return

"1,2,3,4"

My first choice was:

line.split(",")[0..3].join(",")

but that can't be very efficient. I tried to do an explicit loop but I
couldn't get it any better than this:

cIndex = 0
4.times do
  begin
    cIndex = line.index(",",cIndex) + 1
  rescue NameError
    cIndex = -1
  end
end

The rescue being necessary because some lines may only have 4 elements
so there's no fourth comma.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Andrew Queisser
Hewlett Paqard