# Replace empty or strange characters within array of arrays **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [May 26, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-empty-or-strange-characters-within-array-of-arrays/168866 "2009-05-26T21:17:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elricstorm)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-empty-or-strange-characters-within-array-of-arrays/168866/1 "2009-05-26T21:17:43Z")
Hi everyone: I’m a newcomer to Ruby and started learning it approximately one-week ago. I learn very fast (I have a photographic and logical memory) and own a large section of books… I wanted my first program to be a scraper as I do a lot of DB administrative work on several websites and keep a listing of statistics - namely college football statistics. I found a very good parsing idea posted on one site but it didn’t utilize classes so I redesigned and developed it to be more modular with what I was after… For what I have so far - it works 99% with only one problem. In the method for clean\_celldata I’m trying to search through an array of arrays and find one cell that contains either an empty space or the symbol ( Â ). I want to replace that cell data with the number 120. My problem is that I haven’t become as familiar as I need to be with map/collect and other array functionality. I’ve enclosed an attachment that contains the working program, class and methods for Scraper.rb. When you test it out, you’ll see the puts data and if you go to the bottom row (western kentucky) you’ll see there’s no ranking number assigned. On the original website the cell is empty but ruby processes it as the symbol ( Â ). I want to remove that and replace it with the number 120 within the method called clean\_celldata. Many thanks in advance and I really am enjoying my first attempt at a real object-oriented language. I’ve worked in the past with PHP, Autoit, C++, and VB… ---
**Author:** ![elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elricstorm)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-empty-or-strange-characters-within-array-of-arrays/168866/2 "2009-05-26T21:41:31Z")
On May 26, 2009, at 3:17 PM, Joel D. wrote: > On the original website the cell is empty but > ruby processes it as the symbol ( Â ). Actually, on the original site, the cell is not empty, but contains a   so you might want to test for that. It seems like you want to assign the same value to any such row in the “provisional” table (i.e., they all tie for the next available place). -Rob Rob B. [http://agileconsultingllc.com](http://agileconsultingllc.com) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elricstorm)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-empty-or-strange-characters-within-array-of-arrays/168866/3 "2009-05-26T21:46:10Z")
Hi Rob, I might just be making it more confusing for myself. In this example, I’m really just trying to learn how to replace a part of an array with something else when it’s an array of arrays. In the above example, I know exactly where the issue is. @rows[120][0] So how to I replace whatever is in @rows[120][0] with say the number 120? ---
**Author:** ![elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elricstorm)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-empty-or-strange-characters-within-array-of-arrays/168866/4 "2009-05-26T21:58:34Z")
Maybe I’m missing some part of the question, but you can just assign a value to that element in the array like anything else. @rows[120][0] = 120 Alex ---
**Author:** ![elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elricstorm)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 10:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-empty-or-strange-characters-within-array-of-arrays/168866/5 "2009-05-26T22:06:55Z")
Alex wrote: > Maybe I’m missing some part of the question, but you can just assign a > value > to that element in the array like anything else. > @rows[120][0] = 120 > > Alex thanks Alex, the index started from 0 so it was actually @rows[119][0] = 120 but that worked. I didn’t figure on doing the simplest form of a fix for some reason (too much reading this week). I still would like to know what the best way for (find/replace) in an array would be going forward. Perhaps I’m just not searching in the right way for the answer. I originally tried to use a.each to look for a set condition and then apply something else. I’m sure I’ll find the answer soon enough through trial and error. Your fix is the simplest and works. ---
**Author:** ![elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@elricstorm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elricstorm)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-empty-or-strange-characters-within-array-of-arrays/168866/6 "2009-05-26T22:17:56Z")
Well, to search through your elements and do a replacement, you could do something like this: @rows.each do |x| x.each do |y| y.gsub!(/regex/) {|match| do\_your\_substitution(match)} end end Or something to that effect, but you know what they say about regular expressions and using them to solve problems. 🙂 Using any combination of the inject/map/each methods and doing substitutions that way may be your best bet, but some of the more experienced rubyists here may have better suggestions. Alex