# Excessively verbose request for help with regex and arrays

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [August 16, 2007, 6:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192 "2007-08-16T06:10:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonsaid)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 6:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192/1 "2007-08-16T06:10:59Z")

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text = “(20:29:55) awhilewhileaway: I also need to assemble the  
cover/back, and figure out the innards of the aimlog  
formatting/keyword searches”

what I want is essentially 3 fields, the text itself, the speaker  
(stripped of the “:”) and the date information, however as far as the  
date information goes, it will be part of a short-stepped process,  
which will only need to reference the previous one, so all data can  
keep overwriting within two variables, as in: time\_since\_last -  
time\_current = time\_it\_took … I think. I’m new to programming and  
left math in highschool, so it’s a weird (but very fun) place for my  
mind to be. 🙂 still working it out.

so I would like two of the fields of this array to be hashes…  
array[0] being a hash and having a numerical value, array[1] being a  
hash and having personA or personB value, and then array[2] being a  
string. that works, I think…?

wow! I had no idea I knew this much when I started the e-mail. 🙂 any  
hints/solutions for me to play around with? it’s the parentheses of  
the regex that kind of has me stuck, mostly, as well as how to deal  
with clock arithmetic when it rolls over at midnight, I foresee that  
being confusing.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonsaid)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 6:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192/2 "2007-08-16T06:27:01Z")

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On Aug 15, 2007, at 21:08, Simon S. wrote:

> left math in highschool, so it’s a weird (but very fun) place for my  
> mind to be. 🙂 still working it out.

Well, you haven’t explained what you really want to do with your data  
yet, so that all sounds quite a bit complicated. Why not start out  
with just a simple split on space:

time, speaker, content = text.split ’ ', 3

Then you can parse the time:

require ‘time’  
time = Time.parse time

Cut off the ‘:’ on the speaker:

speaker = speaker.sub(/:$/, ‘’)

and you’ll be left with:

p time, speaker, content  
Wed Aug 15 20:29:55 -0700 2007  
“awhilewhileaway”  
“I also need to assemble the cover/back, and figure out the innards  
of the aimlog formatting/keyword searches”

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonsaid)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 6:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192/3 "2007-08-16T06:43:02Z")

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On 16 Aug 2007, at 13:08, Simon S. wrote:

> left math in highschool, so it’s a weird (but very fun) place for my  
> with clock arithmetic when it rolls over at midnight, I foresee that  
> being confusing.

I’m not sure I fully understand what you want to do, perhaps you  
should post a more complete set of data. The part where you describe  
Arrays of Hashes is a bit confusing as well, can you describe your  
data structure using code rather than English? The first regexp part  
is easy enough though:

text = “(20:29:55) awhilewhileaway: I also need to assemble”  
text.scan(/((.+?)) (.+?): (.+)/){|time,name,data|  
p time  
p name  
p data  
}

This doesn’t check for multi-line strings, names with ‘:’ in and  
other weirdness though. So be careful with real world data.

If you have an Array of text lines then you can just iterate through  
(I use map below), scan each one and store the data in another Array  
(no need for Hashes unless I misunderstand you):

irb(main):031:0\> text\_a = ["(20:29:55) awhilewhileaway: I also need  
to assemble","(20:39:55) away: I also need embl"]  
=\> ["(20:29:55) awhilewhileaway: I also need to assemble",  
“(20:39:55) away: I also need embl”]  
irb(main):032:0\> res = text\_a.map{|l| l.scan(/((.+?)) (.+?): (.+)/)  
[0]}  
=\> [["(20:29:55)", “awhilewhileaway”, “I also need to assemble”],  
["(20:39:55)", “away”, “I also need embl”]]  
irb(main):033:0\> res[0]  
=\> ["(20:29:55)", “awhilewhileaway”, “I also need to assemble”]  
irb(main):034:0\> res[0][0]  
=\> “(20:29:55)”

Hope that helps.

Alex G.

Bioinformatics Center  
Kyoto University

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonsaid)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 6:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192/4 "2007-08-16T06:47:03Z")

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thanks, but since the time is only going to be used for arithmetic  
parsing it for additional information isn’t helpful, and the roll-over  
will be problematic.

(23:54:45) - (00:03:45) != 00:09:00

as for the use of the data, basically, at this stage, I’m working on  
formatting aimlogs into “bookish” dialogue, with an eventual goal of  
utilizing [lulu.com](http://lulu.com)’s API to generate books behind my back. 😃 maybe  
thinking about making a gaim plugin if it turns out, with many more  
ideas for what else I could do, but not nearly the ruby rigors I need  
to actualize them (yet!!) 😛

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonsaid)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 7:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192/5 "2007-08-16T07:22:08Z")

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yes, this helps a lot! I should have assumed that parsing the time  
would enable arithmetic like Fri - Thurs, instead I assumed I’d have  
to put it all to integers.

I will have to think over more of exactly what I’m trying to do with  
the arrays/hashes, after I read more about hashes, I think. thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@simonsaid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonsaid)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 7:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/excessively-verbose-request-for-help-with-regex-and-arrays/112192/6 "2007-08-16T07:07:07Z")

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On 16 Aug 2007, at 13:46, Simon S. wrote:

> thanks, but since the time is only going to be used for arithmetic  
> parsing it for additional information isn’t helpful, and the roll-over  
> will be problematic.
> 
> (23:54:45) - (00:03:45) != 00:09:00

Does this help?

Parse the two dates like Eric suggested. If the second (later) time  
is less than the first then add a day to it (60_60_24 seconds). Then  
subtract one from the other to get the difference in seconds.

irb(main):023:0\> t1 = Time.parse(‘23:54:45’)  
=\> Thu Aug 16 23:54:45 +0900 2007  
irb(main):024:0\> t2 = Time.parse(‘00:03:45’)  
=\> Thu Aug 16 00:03:45 +0900 2007  
irb(main):025:0\> t2 += (60 \* 60 \* 24) if t2 \< t1  
=\> Fri Aug 17 00:03:45 +0900 2007  
irb(main):026:0\> diff = t2 - t1  
=\> 540.0

Alex G.

Bioinformatics Center  
Kyoto University