From: Stewart Midwinter <stewart@..._midwinter.ca>
Date: 2002-05-06T11:13:27+09:00
Subject: newbie Q: how to strip blank lines from file?

Well, I've spent a few days reading about Ruby, and want to try my first 
project: a little utility that will read a file that has too many blank 
lines in it, and strip out all of those blank line (could contain spaces or 
tabs).

As I tackles this, I realise that I need to have a good manual in front of 
me, because I'm not getting anywhere. I am definitely confused at this 
point, since this problem could be solved in one or two lines, I believe. 
Does anyone more experienced have any suggestions?  I looked in 
rubycookbook.org and couldn't find anything there either.

Thanks!

here's my attempt so far, which seems to go into an infinite loop.

---
# IO.foreach("snip.txt") { |line| puts line }
arr = IO.readlines("snip.txt")
puts "I read in " + arr.length.to_s + "lines from file."
def blank (s)    # looking for blank lines to chop
   (s =~ /\S/) != nil
end
i = 0
while i < arr.length do
 if blank(arr[i]) == nil then arr[i] = nil
IO.printf("snip.out")
end
# file.close("snip.out")
end
---




-- 
Stewart Midwinter
stewart 'at' midwinter 'dot' ca