Copying strings

Ruby
1

I can’t believe this hasn’t been answered a thousand times, but I can’t
seem to find the answer in the group archive.

I am parsing a string into @text (i.e. abc.def) I want to save the
part before the dot into @firstpart . For example:

           @text << "a"
           @text << "b"
           @text << "c"   next char is "." so @firstpart = @text

then @text << “.”
@text << “d”, etc

The problem is, this doesn’t work. @firstpart apparently is a
pointer to @text and continues to receive the characters. Freezing
@firstpart doesn’t work because then @text << produces a freeze error.
There doesn’t appear to be a “copy” method for string, so how do I do
this?

Sometimes the obvious eludes us…

Bill

2

WoodHacker wrote:

I can’t believe this hasn’t been answered a thousand times, but I can’t
seem to find the answer in the group archive.

I am parsing a string into @text (i.e. abc.def) I want to save the
part before the dot into @firstpart . For example:

why not

‘abc.def’.scan(/(.+)./)[0]

?

Peter

__
http://www.rubyrailways.com

3

WoodHacker wrote:

           @text << "d", etc

The problem is, this doesn’t work. @firstpart apparently is a
pointer to @text and continues to receive the characters. Freezing
@firstpart doesn’t work because then @text << produces a freeze error.
There doesn’t appear to be a “copy” method for string, so how do I do
this?

Sometimes the obvious eludes us…

Bill

Your code sample doesn’t run at all. Here’s one that does.

text = “”
text << “a”
text << “b”
text << “c”
first_part = text.dup
text << “.”
text << “d”

p first_part

4

dup did the trick! Thanks a million

bill