From: Ammar Ali <ammarabuali@...>
Date: 2010-10-28T18:16:09+09:00
Subject: Re: ctype functionality without a gem?

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Robert Klemme
<shortcutter@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Ammar Ali <ammarabuali@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there a built-in method for identifying character types a la
>> ctype() in C? I would like to avoid requiring a gem dependency.

> What do you need that for?  Why not directly use a regexp to match a
> string?  Often you can use capturing groups in a single regexp, e.g.
>
> irb(main):009:0> %w{foo bar 123}.each do |s|
> irb(main):010:1* if /(\d+)|(\w+)/ =~ s
> irb(main):011:2> puts "number" if $1
> irb(main):012:2> puts "chars" if $2
> irb(main):013:2> end
> irb(main):014:1> end
> chars
> chars
> number
> => ["foo", "bar", "123"]

That's very cool. I'll have to remember that one.

I do actually need to test if a character is of a certain type, all by
itself, as part of a parser I'm working on. I came up with this quick
solution for now, http://gist.github.com/650968

Thanks,
Ammar