From: pjb@... (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
Date: 2009-06-19T20:35:05+09:00
Subject: Re: formatting a listing

George George <george.githinji@gmail.com> writes:

> Thanks a lot Pascal! The code is working though a little complex but a 
> very nice learning piece of code. one nitty gritty thing is that not all 
> the columns are seperated by a comma. for example your code
>
> File.open("/home/george/test_r.csv",'w') do |f|
> printf "%s\n\n",
>  begin
>     matrix = Array.new
>     ncols = 1
>     matrix.push(Array.new)
>     (IO.readlines '/home/george/test.data').
>       map { | line | (line.strip) }.
>      each { | item | if item == ""
>                         ncols = (ncols + 1)
>                         matrix.push(Array.new)
>                       else
>                         matrix.at(ncols - 1).push item
>                       end
>      }
>
>     height = (matrix.map { | column | (column.size) }).max
>
>     widths = matrix.map { | column | ((column.map { | cell |
> ((sprintf("%s" , cell)).size) }).max) }
>
>   f.puts((matrix.map { | column | (column + (Array.new((height - 
> column.size) , ""))) }).transpose.
>       map { | row | ((([ row , widths ].transpose).
>       map { | r , w | (sprintf( "%*s" , w , r)) }).join ",")}.join "\n")
> end
>   end
>
> when given  a file(test.data)  containing
> 1 2
> 2 4
>
> 1 4
> 2 3
>
> 1 3
> 2 3
> 3 5
> 4 6
>
> it produces (test_r.csv)
>
> 1 2,1 4,1 3
> 2 4,2 3,2 3
>    ,   ,3 5
>    ,   ,4 6
>
> which is almost there!
> the ideal output would have been
>
> 1, 2,1, 4,1, 3
> 2, 4,2, 3,2, 3
>  ,  ,   ,3, 5
>  ,  ,   ,4, 6
>
> Sorry am asking for a horse and the saddle :) what little modification 
> should i do to produce the second output?

You could add a split and a each somewhere.


irb(main):001:0> "1 2".split(" ").each{|x| puts x} 
1
2
["1", "2"]

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__