From: Joel VanderWerf <joelvanderwerf@...>
Date: 2010-03-23T03:38:39+09:00
Subject: Re: splitting text string

Jonathan Nielsen wrote:
>> I am working on a way to process the status of products and I want to
>> use a bar code reader to make things easier.  I already have the scanner
>> which simply reads the bar code into the keyboard port and appends a
>> carriage return.  I was thinking of printing bar codes that would
>> contain information which is useless externally but useful to my app.
>> For instance...
>>
>> Bar code:  123456789
>> Which would break down into:
>>
>> order (first three) => 123
>> product (next five) => 45678
>> status (last digit) => 9
>>
>> I would then use a nested form to feed the information in the database.
>>
>> My question is... I get the string from the barcode reader as one long
>> string of numbers with no delimiters so how do I break that string down?
>> I can make sure the position of the values is the same in the barcode
>> when we print them but split and chunk both want a delimiter.  Thanks,
>>
>> stephen
> 
> Use ranges as an index:
> 
> ~$ irb
> irb(main):001:0> barcode = '123456789'
> => "123456789"
> irb(main):002:0> order = barcode[0..2]
> => "123"
> irb(main):003:0> product = barcode[3..7]
> => "45678"
> irb(main):004:0> status = barcode[8..8]
> => "9"
> 
> -Jonathan Nielsen
> 

Another idea:

$ irb -r scanf
 >> "123456789".scanf("%3d%5d%1d")
=> [123, 45678, 9]

(note that the strings are converted to integers for you)