Split string at spaces, but not when inside quotation marks?

Ruby
1

I want to be able to split a string at the space, unless the spaces are
inside question marks. I’ve got a solution, but it makes baby Jesus cry:
http://pastebin.com/m6db29d1e

Any better ideas? Is there already a built-in method to do this (or even
one in ActiveSupport)?

2

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:53 PM, Peter B. [email protected]
wrote:

I want to be able to split a string at the space, unless the spaces are
inside question marks. I’ve got a solution, but it makes baby Jesus cry:

string = ‘This is one solution “that uses a while loop” but I think
“someone can do it with map”’
quotes = []
while string =~ /“.?“/
quotes << string.slice!(/”.?”/)
end
p quotes + string.split(’ ')

#=> [“"that uses a while loop"”, “"someone can do it with map"”,
“This”, “is”, “one”, “solution”, “but”, “I”, “think”]

Mikel

3

From: Peter B. [mailto:[email protected]]

I want to be able to split a string at the space, unless the

spaces are

inside question marks. I’ve got a solution, but it makes baby

   ^^^^^^^^^^^ i think you meant quotation marks, no?

Jesus cry:

http://pastebin.com/m6db29d1e

that is one way and it does not look bad.
there are many ways, of course.

Any better ideas?

im not sure if this is better, but

irb(main):071:0> x
=> "this "this too " not this "these too " not these "

irb(main):072:0> x.split(/\s*?(“.?")\s?/).map{|x| x=~/^”.*"$/ ? x :
x.split}.flatten
=> [“this”, “"this too "”, “not”, “this”, “"these too "”, “not”,
“these”]

Is there already a built-in method to do

this (or even one in ActiveSupport)?

i do not know of ActiveSupport in ruby. Are you talking about rails?

kind regards -botp

4

Peter B. wrote:

Is there already a built-in method to do this

require ‘shellwords’
Shellwords.shellwords ‘Hello “wo rld” how “are " you today”’
=> [“Hello”, “wo rld”, “how”, “are " you today”]

HTH,
Sebastian

5

Sebastian H. wrote:

Peter B. wrote:

Is there already a built-in method to do this

require ‘shellwords’
Shellwords.shellwords ‘Hello “wo rld” how “are " you today”’
=> [“Hello”, “wo rld”, “how”, “are " you today”]

HTH,
Sebastian

Mmm, that’s yummy! Thanks, I’m using this now. Thanks to all of your
replies, you all rock hard.

6

On 19 Mar 2008, at 10:26, Sebastian H. wrote:

Peter B. wrote:

Is there already a built-in method to do this

require ‘shellwords’
Shellwords.shellwords ‘Hello “wo rld” how “are " you today”’
=> [“Hello”, “wo rld”, “how”, “are " you today”]

Or you can pretend it’s CSV:

$ irb

require ‘csv’
=> true

s = ‘the “quick brown” fox jumped “over a lazy” dog’
=> “the “quick brown” fox jumped “over a lazy” dog”

CSV.parse_line s, ’ ’
=> [“the”, “quick brown”, “fox”, “jumped”, “over a lazy”, “dog”]

Unfortunately it doesn’t handle the pesky backslash in Sebastian’s
example above.

s = ‘Hello “wo rld” how “are " you today”’
=> “Hello “wo rld” how “are \” you today”"

CSV.parse_line s, ’ ’
=> []

Oh well!

Cheers,
Andy

7

On 19.03.2008 17:07, Peter B. wrote:

Mmm, that’s yummy! Thanks, I’m using this now. Thanks to all of your
replies, you all rock hard.

Though I’m coming in late to the party: sometimes you can exchange
#split and #scan. This is something I use sometimes:

irb(main):006:0> string = ‘a simple solution that uses “a regular
expression” - see?’
=> “a simple solution that uses “a regular expression” - see?”
irb(main):007:0> quotes = string.scan %r{"[^"]*"|\S+}
=> [“a”, “simple”, “solution”, “that”, “uses”, ““a regular
expression””, “-”, “see?”]

Note: the order of the alternative in the regexp matters! This works
because Ruby’s regex engine is NFA based. Here’s what happens if you
exchange the two

irb(main):008:0> quotes = string.scan %r{\S+|"[^"]*"}
=> [“a”, “simple”, “solution”, “that”, “uses”, ““a”, “regular”,
“expression””, “-”, “see?”]

Kind regards

robert