Ruby: splitting a string without removing separators

Question

I need to split a string without removing the separators. Is there a simple and "Ruby oriented" way to do this?

For example, given a string like this:

str = "(This is (a test))"

what I need is this:

["(", "This", "is", "(", "a", "test", ")", ")"]

I tried using the split method for strings, using the brackets "(" and ")" as separators, but then I get them removed from the returning array. Any advice will be helpful.

What happened to the spaces in your original string? They aren't present in the array of strings. — Andrew Marshall
– Andrew Marshall, Commented Apr 6, 2012 at 15:18
Yes: I'm trying to figure out how to acquire a string in a binary tree, in a lisp-like way, saving the words in the leaves. To do this (not sure if the best way to do so) I need to solve this problem. — kwadr4tic
– kwadr4tic, Commented Apr 6, 2012 at 15:25

sawa · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-06 16:28:34Z

8

Maybe something like this:

str.scan(/\(|\)|\w+/)

edited Apr 6, 2012 at 16:28

sawa

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answered Apr 6, 2012 at 15:22

rainkinz

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2 Comments

Michael Slade Over a year ago

This regexp will ignore all other characters. Is that what you want?

pguardiario Over a year ago

Good but just slightly cleaner is: /[()]|\w+/

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