From: Joel VanderWerf <joelvanderwerf@...>
Date: 2010-09-21T03:06:36+09:00
Subject: Re: An elegant way...

On 09/20/2010 10:10 AM, F. Senault wrote:
> Hello everybody.
>
> I've written a method to solve a little problem, but I find my solution
> really ugly.  So, I'm trying to find ways to improve it.
>
> The method takes one argument, an array containing a sorted list of
> strings representing episodes numbers.  The episodes numbers are either
> a number ('1', '12') or prefixed with a letter ('S1' for special 1).  My
> goal is to find sequences in the numbers and join them with dashes :

a = [ '1', '2', 'S3', 'S4', 'S5', 'O6' ]

r0 = nil
r1 = nil
result = []

a.each_cons 2 do |prev, s|
   case s
   when prev.succ
     r0 ||= prev
     r1 = s
   else
     if r0
       result << "#{r0}-#{r1}"
     else
       result << prev
     end
     r0 = r1 = nil
   end
end

if r0
   result << "#{r0}-#{r1}"
else
   result << a.last
end

p result # ==> ["1-2", "S3-S5", "O6"]