From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2010-08-10T15:34:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Crunching Text Not Working in a Loop

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 12:41 AM, Richard Fairbanks <lists@f-p-i.com> wrote:
> Greetings, folks!
>
> I need to be able to capitalize words inside quote marks, as part of a
> string of words. I need to use proper publishing capitalization
> protocols which is more involved than simply making the first letter of
> each word uppercase. Thus the appended script is greatly truncated!
>
> I would be very grateful if someone could please advise me on why the
> following doesn’t work as part of a repeating loop or with typographic
> quote marks, but does work as a simple standalone script.
>
> Blessings and thank you!
>
> Richard Fairbanks
>
> ----
>
> The following does work, but only if the first quote is a straight
> quote: ' or ". It doesn’t work with typesetter marks: ‘ or “
>
>  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
>
>  require 'rubygems'
>  require "jcode"; $KCODE = "UTF8"
>  require 'appscript'; include Appscript
>  require 'osax'; include OSAX
>
>  # copy the text: "abc"
>  item = osax.the_clipboard()
>  item1 = item[0,1]
>  item2 = item[1..-1]
>  item = item1 + item2.capitalize!
>  osax.set_the_clipboard_to(item)  #=> "Abc"s
>
> ----
>
> BUT it doesn’t work at all as part of a loop:
>
>  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
>
>  require 'rubygems'
>  require "jcode"; $KCODE = "UTF8"
>  require 'appscript'; include Appscript
>  require 'osax'; include OSAX
>
>  openingQuoteMark = ["'", "\"", "‘", "’", "“"]
>
>  # get the text to be processed:
>  theString = osax.the_clipboard()
>
>  theWords = theString.split  # convert the text to an array of the
> words
>
>  theWords.each do |item|
>    charList = item.split(//)  # create an array of the word’s
> characters
>      # first check to see if there is an opening quote mark
>    unless openingQuoteMark.include?(charList[0])  # if the word doesn’t
> start with a quote mark. If it does, this will only try to capitalize
> the quote mark!
>      # this works fine
>      item = item.capitalize!
>    else
>      # but the following doesn’t work
>      # to test: copy me to the clipboard with "abc"
>      item1 = item[0,1]
>      item2 = item[1..-1]
>      item = item1 + item2.capitalize!
>      osax.say "but it does run!"
>    end
>  end

One thing comes to mind: you are iterating over theWords, passing each
word into the block as the variable "item". The object referenced to
that variable is never modified, or the modified version assigned back
into the theWords array. So after the "each" loop, the array the Words
is the original one. The first branch of the unless conditional works,
because you are calling a self modifying method on item
(item.capitalize!). In fact, it will work even if you leave out the
assignment, cause you are assigning to the block local variable item,
which is then reassigned in the following iteration.

On the other branch, when you do item2 = item[1..-1] you are doing a
copy of the string, and when you call item2.capitalize!, the original
string is not modified:

irb(main):005:0> s = "abcde"
=> "abcde"
irb(main):006:0> a = s[1..-1]
=> "bcde"
irb(main):007:0> a.capitalize!
=> "Bcde"
irb(main):008:0> s
=> "abcde"

So, the object referenced by item is not modified, and then you only
do item = item1 + item2.capitalize!, which does nothing to the
original string, but only assign the local variable. One way to do it
if you don't need the original the_words array:

the_words = the_string.split

the_words.map! do |item|
    charList = item.split(//)  # create an array of the word’s characters
     # first check to see if there is an opening quote mark
   unless openingQuoteMark.include?(charList[0])
      item.capitalize
   else
     item1 = item[0,1]
     item2 = item[1..-1]
     item1 + item2.capitalize
  end
end

p the_words

map! will modify the array, substituting each entry with the result of
the block for that entry. Notice how I don't assign the the item
variable anymore. And by the way, the common Ruby convention is to use
camel_case, not snakeCase. If you want to keep both the original array
and the new one, you can do this:

the_words = the_string.split

new_words = the_words.map do |item|
    charList = item.split(//)  # create an array of the word’s characters
     # first check to see if there is an opening quote mark
   unless openingQuoteMark.include?(charList[0])
      item.capitalize
   else
     item1 = item[0,1]
     item2 = item[1..-1]
     item1 + item2.capitalize
  end
end

p the_words
p new_words

map will create a new array, assigning the result of the block to each entry.

Hope this helps,

Jesus.