How to separate a string to many elements in nested array in Ruby

Question

I have a string from tab delimited file (with carriage return and newline)

"a\taa\taaa\r\nb\tbb\tbbb\r\nc\tcc\tccc"

I want to convert this string into an array like

[["a","aa","aaa"],["b","bb","bbb"],["c","cc","ccc"]]

Now I already did .scan(/(.+?)\r\n/) but I still got only

[["a\taa\taaa"],["b\tbb\tbbb"],["c\tcc\tccc"]]

This sounds like an XY Problem. How are you getting the string? Using the CSV class should make this very easy. — the Tin Man
– the Tin Man, Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 18:10

Anthony · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-23 14:29:39Z

5

I tend to use CSV#parse for things like this, since the parsing code is easy to understand:

CSV.parse("a\taa\taaa\r\nb\tbb\tbbb\r\nc\tcc\tccc", col_sep: "\t")
=> [["a", "aa", "aaa"], ["b", "bb", "bbb"], ["c", "cc", "ccc"]]

answered Jan 23, 2017 at 14:29

Anthony

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falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-23 14:18:44Z

1

How about using String#split and Array#map?

s = "a\taa\taaa\r\nb\tbb\tbbb\r\nc\tcc\tccc"

s.split("\r")  # split by \r (bigger chunks)
=> ["a\taa\taaa", "\nb\tbb\tbbb", "\nc\tcc\tccc"]

s.split("\r").map { |x| x.split }  # Split bigger chunks by spaces (including \t)
=> [["a", "aa", "aaa"], ["b", "bb", "bbb"], ["c", "cc", "ccc"]]

answered Jan 23, 2017 at 14:18

falsetru

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