Splitting A String

[Andrew Stewart]

Hello,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

Thanks!

Regards,
Andy Stewart

 

[Jan Friedrich]

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

require 'csv'
CSV.parse_line('a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog', ' ')


regards
Jan

 

[James Edward Gray II]

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

require 'csv'
CSV.parse_line('a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog', ' ')

Wow, that's mighty clever. I didn't even think of trying that. Nice
job.

James Edward Gray II

 

[James Edward Gray II]

Hello,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

Thanks!

Regards,
Andy Stewart

Do this -
'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'.split

Not quite the same. Look again.

James Edward Gray II

 

[Andrew Stewart]

Hello Jan,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

require 'csv'
CSV.parse_line('a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog', ' ')

Nice!

Thank you!
Andy Stewart

 

[Jan Friedrich]

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'.split

This was also my first idea, but

['a', 'quick', '"brown', 'fox"', 'jumped', '"over', 'the', 'lazy"',
'dog'] != ['a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog']

regards
Jan

 

[Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner]

Hello,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

Thanks!

Regards,
Andy Stewart

Do this -
'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'.split

Not quite the same. Look again.

James Edward Gray II

But this works:

irb(main):001:0> 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'.split(/[ "]+/)
=> ["a", "quick", "brown", "fox", "jumped", "over", "the", "lazy", "dog"]

Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner

 

[Xavier Noria]

Hello,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ]

Can quotes be escaped? If not there's a simple regexp that does the job:

str = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
puts str.scan(/"([^"]*)"|(\w+)/).flatten.select {|s| s}

You can also handle slashes, but it gets uglier.

-- fxn

 

[Xavier Noria]

Hello,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ]

Can quotes be escaped? If not there's a simple regexp that does the
job:

str = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
puts str.scan(/"([^"]*)"|(\w+)/).flatten.select {|s| s}

Heh, reading it I recalled there's a more specific idiom for that
last select:

str = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
puts str.scan(/"((?:\\.|[^"])*)"|(\w+)/).flatten.compact

-- fxn

 

[Logan Capaldo]

Hello,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

Here's yet another way:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'test/unit'
require 'strscan'
class TestScan < Test::Unit::TestCase
def test_splitter
assert_equal( %w(a b c), splitter(%q{a b c}))
assert_equal(["the", "\"quick brown\"", "fox", "jumped", "over", "the", "lazy", "dog"], splitter(%{the "quick brown" fox jumped over the lazy dog}))
end
end

def splitter(s)
res = []
scanner = StringScanner.new(s)
scanner.skip(/\s*/)
until scanner.eos?
if scanner.scan(/"/)
# quoted string
scanner.scan(/([^"]*")/)
res << '"' + scanner[1]
elsif scanner.scan(/(\S+)/)
res << scanner[1]
end
scanner.skip(/\s*/)
end
res
end
__END__

 

[Xavier Noria]

puts str.scan(/"((?:\\.|[^"])*)"|(\w+)/).flatten.compact

Sorry, that regexp was part of a test and got copied by accident. I
just meant to clean up the select, that's:

str = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
puts str.scan(/"([^"]*)"|(\w+)/).flatten.compact

-- fxn

 

[Robert Klemme]

puts str.scan(/"((?:\\.|[^"])*)"|(\w+)/).flatten.compact

Sorry, that regexp was part of a test and got copied by accident. I just
meant to clean up the select, that's:

str = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
puts str.scan(/"([^"]*)"|(\w+)/).flatten.compact

And solutions with #inject:

irb(main):010:0> require 'enumerator'
=> true
irb(main):011:0> str = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
=> "a quick \"brown fox\" jumped \"over the lazy\" dog"
irb(main):012:0> str.to_enumscan, /"([^"]*)"|(\S+)/).inject([]) {|a,m|
a << m.compact!.shift}
=> ["a", "quick", "brown fox", "jumped", "over the lazy", "dog"]
irb(main):013:0> str.to_enumscan, /"([^"]*)"|(\S+)/).inject([])
{|a,(m,n)| a << (m||n)}
=> ["a", "quick", "brown fox", "jumped", "over the lazy", "dog"]

But honestly, I found Jan's solution much more elegant. Great stuff!

Kind regards

robert

 

[Xavier Noria]

s = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
a = s.split(/"([^"]+)"/).map{|s|s.strip}

Preserving part of the separator is a good trick, but the split
itself is wrong:

["a quick", "brown fox", "jumped", "over the lazy", "dog"]

-- fxn

 

[Kyle Schmitt]

OK this was my answer, but it didn't quite work...
I need to work harder on my regexes I guess
s = 'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'
a = s.gsub(/("[a-z]*) ([a-z ]*")/i,"#{$1}_#{$2}")
a.each_index{|i| a.gsub!('_',' ')}

 

[Louis J Scoras]

Not a good solution by any means, but somebody might find it
interesting. Assumes balanced quotes, no escaping, etc.

require 'enumerator'

def my_split s
s.split('"') . # Just split on the quote
to_enumeach_slice,2) . # ... and deal w/ pairs
inject([]) {
|a,(e,o)| a .
concat(
e.split(' ') + # Split unquotes
[o] # Stuff in quotes is okay as is
)
} .
compact # Finnally remove nils
end

 

[George Ogata]

Hello,

What's a (good) way to convert this:

'a quick "brown fox" jumped "over the lazy" dog'

into this:

[ 'a', 'quick', 'brown fox', 'jumped', 'over the lazy', 'dog' ] ?

Thanks!

If you're looking for shell-quoting-like behavior, I actually think
it's more appropriate to use shellwords for this:

irb(main):001:0> require 'shellwords'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> Shellwords.shellwords 'a quick "brown fox" jumps
"over the lazy" dog'
=> ["a", "quick", "brown fox", "jumps", "over the lazy", "dog"]

It will also handle sloshing:

irb(main):003:0> Shellwords.shellwords 'a\ b c'
=> ["a b", "c"]

And distinguish between single and double quotes (for better or for worse):

irb(main):004:0> Shellwords.shellwords %{"a\\"a"}
=> ["a\"a"]
irb(main):005:0> Shellwords.shellwords %{'a\\'}
=> ["a\\"]

Shellwords is in the standard library.

Regards,
George.

 

[Andrew Stewart]

If you're looking for shell-quoting-like behavior, I actually think
it's more appropriate to use shellwords for this: [snip]
Shellwords is in the standard library.

Thanks for the pointer -- I didn't know about Shellwords.

Regards,
Andy Stewart