From: Mike Stok <mike@...>
Date: 2002-09-11T02:54:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Parsing a line into a hash table...

In article <C47CCC6238EFD4119C5200508B95A100074AFB53@cup1ex1.portal.com>,
Kurt Euler wrote:

> All-
> 
> Currently I parse tab-delimited lines in a text file into a 1D array
> called "field" thusly:
> 
> IO.foreach("./control/packages.txt") { |x|
>     field = x.chop.split('\t')
>     do_stuff
> }
> 
> Question: How can I parse these lines into values for a pre-defined hash
> table. (My objective is to give each field a name rather than a number.)

One way to do it might be a struct e.g.

  Fields = Struct.new("Fields", :first, :second, :third)

  # ...

  IO.foreach("./control/packages.txt") { |line|
      fields = Fields.new(*line.chop.split(/\t/))

      # use fields['first'] or fields.first ...
  }

You might want to do some error checking to see if you get the right
number of fields from your input, in my example Fields.members.size is
3.

Hope this helps,

Mike

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