How does parse work?

How is it different from split? chomp?

You might find reading the documentation and having irb is useful to
learning things.

String#strip: http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/String.src/M001189.html
String#chomp: http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/String.html#M001188

As for “parse”, you’ll have to be more specific with your question;
perhaps
you can find information in documentation, or, failing that, Google.