From: Qubert <qubert@...>
Date: 2003-06-17T11:20:00+09:00
Subject: Extracting columns from Array withSubstitution problem

I have a little hurdle to jump on this code.
I am manipulating a lot of data that is in a columnar format.
The first row has the titles of each column that I successfully 
use to call the columns through the command line (ARGV.shift).
Below I show 2 attempts to pull out the columns of data using the reference
to the first row.  The first one (y1) works, until I found that absent data
was marked by one or more *.  So y1 was changing *** to 0, but I need to
input these missing data points as -9.  So y2 was attempted, in which it
finds the ** but then for some reason inputs the entire array x at the 
end of the newly collected array.  Now I didn't believe that it would work,
but I didn't expect it to input array x either.  So I would like some help
creating code that will collect a new array like y1 but substitute -9 for ***.

Partial code:
arg1 = ARGV.shift
arg2 = ARGV.shift
label = Array.new  # for y1, y2 I found I didn't need to declare y1=Array.new?
label = x.shift   # first line is headers for the columns
y1 = x.collect {|j| j[label.index(arg1)].to_i}  # works but changes ** into 0
y2 = x.each do |j|    # doesn't work, inputs all of x as y2, i.e. y2 = x
� if /\*+/ =~ j[label.index(arg2)]
��� -9
  else 
    j[label.index(arg2)].to_i
� end
end


Sample dataset:
DIR SPD GUS CLG
030   6 *** 722
360   5 *** 722
020   * *** 722
030   6 *** 722

Thank you for the help, Ruby is great, I just haven't found the "Way".
Qubert