From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2010-09-18T04:26:38+09:00
Subject: Re: search and replace

John Smith wrote:
> I want to be able to run a program that will do a bunch
> of searches specified in an array of strings, and replace the
> first occurrence of those strings with strings specified on a
> second array for a given text file.
> 
> What would be the best way to do this?

Have you got something simple working yet? For example, you could write 
a loop which matches each of your test strings in turn, and replaces 
with the corresponding target string.

>> str = "hello"
=> "hello"
>> str["el"] = "a"
=> "a"
>> str
=> "halo"

Once you've got that working, then you can try something more 
sophisticated if your application demands it. One way would be to build 
a Regexp (programmatically) which matches any of your test strings, and 
use gsub with a block to perform the replacements. But it's a bit 
trickier there to only replace the *first* occurrence of each.
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.