From: Stefan Schmiedl <s@...>
Date: 2002-06-02T17:09:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Problem: Newbie with a question on file arrays and file insertion ...

On Sun, 02 Jun 2002 07:36:57 GMT,
Kurt Euler <keuler@portal.com> wrote:
> Ruby pros:
> 
> I am a Ruby newbie, and would appreciate help with the following to jump-start a project.
> 
> 1)- How can I read the contents of a text file into a two-dimentional array, such that one dimension are the rows of text and the other dimension are fields that occur on each line as delimited by some character.
> 
>      Note: A tutorial I'm using shows that I can use the readlines method 
>      to create a one-dimensional array, with each line from the source file
>      an element. It seems like I ought to be able to use the same or
>      similar method to include the second dimension (delimited fields in 
>      each row).

File("whatever").readlines.collect { |line|
  line.split "separator"
}

comes to mind here.

> 
> 2)- Say I have text files FileA and FileB. FileA contains a text tag in the somewhere in it called, say, "<foobar>". How can I:
> 
>      - locate the tag <foobar> in FileA and
>      - replace <foobar> with the entire contents of FileB.
> 
>      In short, I want to insert FileB in FileA where the <foobar> tag is,
>      then delete the tag.

if the files are not too large, you could read them as a whole
and then just do string substitution. 

a = File("a").read
b = File("b").read

a.gsub(/<foobar>/, b)


Be warned: this is written on a sunday morning before breakfast :-)

s.