From: Niklas Frykholm <niklas@...>
Date: 2003-11-17T18:37:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Reason #642 to use Ruby instead of C++ -Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

> Of course the file parsing part in Ruby was just:
> 
>       adj_hash = {}
>       tmp_hash = {}
>       IO.foreach(filename) {|line|
> 	node,*adj_nodes = line.split(',').map{|n| 
> 	  unless tmp_hash.has_key? n.strip 
> 	    tmp_hash[n.strip] = Graph::Graph::Node.new(n.strip) 
> 	  else 
> 	    tmp_hash[n.strip]
> 	  end
>       }
> 
> That's just 10 lines.  I won't post the C++ abomination for accomplishing 
> the same thing here, let's just say that it's 45 lines long.

I love Ruby's structure and convenience functions so much, I often try 
to mirror them in C++. For example:

void split( std::vector<std::string>* results, const std::string& s,
    const std::string &split_by)
{
     std::string::size_type start = 0;
     while(1) {
         std::string::size_type found = s.find(split_by, start);
         if (found != start)
             results->push_back( s.substr(start, found - start) );
         if (found == std::string::npos)
            break;
         start = found + split_by.size();
     }
}

It's a bit extra work to write such general functions, but think how 
much easier it will be the next time you want to move some code from 
Ruby to C++.

// Niklas