From: Philip Parker <lists@...>
Date: 2013-04-20T11:46:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Input: sentence Modify: words Output: modified sentence

Thank you all! You are helping me to understand more complicated
expressions.  I actually did get it to work with my simple logic:

#Limitations: assumes no internal punctuation (i.e. hyphens, commas,
periods on abbreviations, quotes, apostrophes, etc.)
#Known outputs: will return unmodified alphanumeric instances, for
example "3rd".

   s="There are 12 chickens for 2 roosters."
#get punctuation from end of sentence
   p=s[-1].chr
#create array without end punctuation
   anop = s.split(p)
#create the sentence no end punctuation
    snop = anop.join
#Make initial word array equal to working output array
    array = output = snop.split(' ')
#iterate through all words in the array. If digits then return
unchanged, otherwise abbreviate as requested.
$i = 0
$num = a.length
while $i < $num  do
   if a[$i].match(/\d/)
   then output[$i]=a[$i]
   else output[$i]=a[$i][0].chr + (a[$i].length-2).to_s + a[$i][-1].chr
   end
   $i +=1
end
#add punctuation back to last word
output[-1]<<p
#rejoin output array as abbreviated sentence
os = output.join(' ')
#output abbreviated sentence
puts os

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