Basically I have one string that I need to break out into seperate parts. I'm still not great with ruby functions so just need a little help.
I start with a string that looks like the following:
SEARCH_TERM(S) CITY,STATE
I need to break apart all these into three variables.
1. SEARCH_TERMS(S)
2. CITY
3. STATE
Note there is a space between last search item and the city.
Thanks for any help!
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I would most certainly use a regular expression solution for a task like this.
There is little gain to get from split and join here
str = "SEARCH_TERM(S) CITY,STATE"
str.scan(/^(.*)\s+([^\s,]+
puts a[0]
puts a[1]
puts a[2]
end
of course you can save the different regex results in a variable if you need to
and if you make it an array, you can easily work on an entire csv file like this
cheers
Geert
choosing the regex carefully could overcome problems with New Haven.
It requires some analysis though, but maybe the search terms exclude uppercase characters
Look at this example
str = "term1 term2 term3 New Haven,New Haven State"
str.scan(/^([^A-Z]+)\s+([^
puts a[0]
puts a[1]
puts a[2]
end
needless to say why I would go for a regex solution
finetuning of the regex could be done if you gave us some real examples
cheers
Geert
I agree with the other experts, you can separate the components with a regular expression, the only complexity is if the City happens to be multiple words. My original approach to this was to parse the string into three portions:
1 - All Terms (anything) up until a space followed by
2 - City (letters) followed by a comma followed by
3 - State (letters)
The program I used to test this was:
str = "one two three Rochester, NY"
str =~ /^(.*?) (\w+)\s*,\s*(\w+)\s$*/
p $1.split
puts $2
puts $3
The first capture $1 just then needs to be space separated (the default of the split method) and therefore produces an array of terms. This is not the cleanest way to do it, just showing a simple way to go about it. More then likely you would want to make a Regexp object to "compile" the regular expression in case you use it multiple times. Also there may be symbols or numbers that I miss because I assume just letters most of the time.
Hope this helps,
- Joe P
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: wesgarrisonPosted on 2007-12-23 at 14:21:58ID: 20522771
If your only delimiter between the search terms and the city is a space, you're going to have issues with any city that has a space in it:
Term1 Term2 Kansas City, KS
... would make "City" the city and "Kansas" an additional search term.
That said, just call split() on it again with a space, which will return an array of words:
search_terms_state = search_parts.first.split('
city = search_terms_state.pop
# pop actually removes the last element and returns it, so only the terms are left
RubyDoc for Array::pop()
http://www.ruby-doc.org/co
Is that what you're looking for? If not, lemme know and we'll get it straightened out.