how to split ruby string with Regex?

Question

Hi I want to split this string into the following.

text = "In the last summer, I visited the U.S. with my friend. It was great experience. I loved an ice cream in the U.S. Welcome to U.S.A. pal!"

In the last summer, I visited the U.S. with my friend.
It was great experience.
I loved an ice cream in the U.S.
Welcome to U.S.A. pal!

Obviously, I can't apply text.split(".") nor text.split(". "). So the thing is first rule is that the string will be split by "." with the exception of words that are abbreviated. However, I have no idea how I can do this in Ruby.

It seems that using Regex might work but I have not understood how to do this. Would you please share your idea?

fphilipe · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-05 14:03:39Z

5

Basically you want to split at whitespace after a period, followed by an uppercase letter:

text.split(/(?<=\.)\s+(?=[[:upper:]])/)

The regular expression will only match the whitespace \s+, but ensure that it was preceded by a period using a positive lookbehind (?<=\.) and followed by an uppercase letter using a positive lookahead (?=[[:upper:]]).

answered May 5, 2019 at 14:03

fphilipe

10.1k1 gold badge42 silver badges55 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

how to split ruby string with Regex?

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related