From: Xavier Noria <fxn@...>
Date: 2003-10-12T17:13:40+09:00
Subject: Re: splitting a line by columns

On Sunday 12 October 2003 05:50, Mike Campbell wrote:

> I have a line of text output in columnar form; what's the best way to
> split it into its requisite parts?
>
> Say I have lines of
>
> aaaaabbcccccddeee
>
> I can do something like:
>
> md = /(.....)(..)(.....)(..)(...)/.match(line);  # seems klugy
> somehow

If the data is a fixed-width record String#unpack is a compact idiom, 
and it's usually fast as well. For instance:

    record = "aaaaabbcccccddeee"
    fields = record.unpack("a5a2a5a2a3")

-- fxn