Script or utility to transform a string w embedded spaces into a sym

Rails
#1

I need to transform strings like “Instructor ID” or “Lovely Ice tree”
into sym :instructor_id , :lovely_ice_tree
I tried to do the following :
downcase all string components the unique the spaces and replace w an
underscore

is there a better and faster way to do it ?

thanks fy feedback

#2

On Apr 18, 2011, at 3:09 PM, Erwin wrote:

I need to transform strings like “Instructor ID” or “Lovely Ice tree”
into sym :instructor_id , :lovely_ice_tree
I tried to do the following :
downcase all string components the unique the spaces and replace w an
underscore

is there a better and faster way to do it ?

string.downcase.tr(’ ', ‘_’)

maybe.

#3

On 18 April 2011 23:09, Erwin [email protected] wrote:

I need to transform strings like “Instructor ID” or “Lovely Ice tree”
into sym :instructor_id , :lovely_ice_tree

is there a better and faster way to do it ?

I have a little monkey-patch called “dehumanize” which is almost
what you want:

module ActiveSupport::Inflector

does the opposite of humanize… mostly. Basically does a

space-substituting .underscore

def dehumanize(string_value)
result = string_value.to_s.dup
result.downcase.gsub(/ +/,’_’)
end
end
class String
def dehumanize
ActiveSupport::Inflector.dehumanize(self)
end
end

you could then call:
String.dehumanize.to_sym

#4

thanks , part of the solution as per Michael’s patch

#5

Thanks , I’ll use this patch …