Array question

Ruby
1

Hey everyone I’m a 14 year-old beginner in ruby and I discovered that I
need to separate strings into arrays for a program that I am making.
For example, if I have the string ‘abc’, I’ll want to make it into the
array [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’]. Is there any way to do this? I am using version
1.8.6, by the way. All help is welcome.

Thanks in advance!

2

Hi –

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Ruby Mokx wrote:

Hey everyone I’m a 14 year-old beginner in ruby and I discovered that I

Welcome!

need to separate strings into arrays for a program that I am making.
For example, if I have the string ‘abc’, I’ll want to make it into the
array [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’]. Is there any way to do this? I am using version
1.8.6, by the way. All help is welcome.

The method you want is String#split:

‘abc’.split(//) # => [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’]

Split takes a regular expression or string as its argument, and splits
on that pattern. The empty regular expression causes it to split the
string into individual characters.

There are some more bells and whistles to it but that’s the basic
idea.

David

–
The Ruby training with D. Black, G. Brown, J.McAnally
Compleat Jan 22-23, 2010, Tampa, FL
Rubyist http://www.thecompleatrubyist.com

David A. Black/Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)

3

On Oct 26, 6:46 pm, “David A. Black” [email protected] wrote:

need to separate strings into arrays for a program that I am making.
For example, if I have the string ‘abc’, I’ll want to make it into the
array [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’]. Is there any way to do this? I am using version
1.8.6, by the way. All help is welcome.

The method you want is String#split:

‘abc’.split(//) # => [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’]

Here are two other techniques, just for fun:

all_characters = “abc”.scan(/./)

all_characters=[]
“abc”.each_char{ |x| all_characters.push(x) }

4

Hi,

Am Dienstag, 27. Okt 2009, 09:38:30 +0900 schrieb Ruby Mokx:

Hey everyone I’m a 14 year-old beginner in ruby and I discovered that I
need to separate strings into arrays for a program that I am making.
For example, if I have the string ‘abc’, I’ll want to make it into the
array [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’]. Is there any way to do this? I am using version
1.8.6, by the way. All help is welcome.

Hey Mokx, the answer has been given. Let me start to disturb you.
There’s a difference between

str.scan /./ # and
str.scan /./u

Your enthusiasm ist delighting me but the real world is rough.
Cheer up.

Bertram

5

Hi –

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Phrogz wrote:

Here are two other techniques, just for fun:

all_characters = “abc”.scan(/./)

That won’t include newline characters, though, unless you use the /m
modifier.

all_characters=[]
“abc”.each_char{ |x| all_characters.push(x) }

:slight_smile: Actually in 1.9 you could do:

str.chars.to_a

but he’s using 1.8.6.

David

–
The Ruby training with D. Black, G. Brown, J.McAnally
Compleat Jan 22-23, 2010, Tampa, FL
Rubyist http://www.thecompleatrubyist.com

David A. Black/Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)