I need to replace all special characters within a string with their index.
For example,
"I-need_to#change$all%special^characters^"
should become:
"I1need6to9change16all20special28characters39"
The index of all special character differs.
I have checked many links replacing all with single character, occurances of a character.
I found very similar link but it I do not want to adopt these replace its index number as I need to replace all of the special characters.
I have also tried to do something like this:
str.gsub!(/[^0-9A-Za-z]/, '')
Here str is my example string.
As this replaces all the characters but with space, and I want the index instead of space. Either all of the special character or these seven
\/*[]:?
I need to replace this seven mainly but it would be OK if we replace all of them.
I need a simpler way.
Thanks in advance.
You can use the global variable $` and the block form of gsub:
irb> str = "I-need_to#change$all%special^characters^"
=> "I-need_to#change$all%special^characters^"
irb> str.gsub(/[^0-9A-Za-z]/) { $`.length }
=> "I1need6to9change16all20special28characters39"
Related
How can I remove all newlines and spaces from a string in Ruby?
For example, if we have a string:
"123\n12312313\n\n123 1231 1231 1"
It should become this:
"12312312313123123112311"
That is, all whitespaces should be removed.
You can use something like:
var_name.gsub!(/\s+/, '')
Or, if you want to return the changed string, instead of modifying the variable,
var_name.gsub(/\s+/, '')
This will also let you chain it with other methods (i.e. something_else = var_name.gsub(...).to_i to strip the whitespace then convert it to an integer). gsub! will edit it in place, so you'd have to write var_name.gsub!(...); something_else = var_name.to_i. Strictly speaking, as long as there is at least one change made,gsub! will return the new version (i.e. the same thing gsub would return), but on the chance that you're getting a string with no whitespace, it'll return nil and things will break. Because of that, I'd prefer gsub if you're chaining methods.
gsub works by replacing any matches of the first argument with the contents second argument. In this case, it matches any sequence of consecutive whitespace characters (or just a single one) with the regex /\s+/, then replaces those with an empty string. There's also a block form if you want to do some processing on the matched part, rather than just replacing directly; see String#gsub for more information about that.
The Ruby docs for the class Regexp are a good starting point to learn more about regular expressions -- I've found that they're useful in a wide variety of situations where a couple of milliseconds here or there don't count and you don't need to match things that can be nested arbitrarily deeply.
As Gene suggested in his comment, you could also use tr:
var_name.tr(" \t\r\n", '')
It works in a similar way, but instead of replacing a regex, it replaces every instance of the nth character of the first argument in the string it's called on with the nth character of the second parameter, or if there isn't, with nothing. See String#tr for more information.
You could also use String#delete:
str = "123\n12312313\n\n123 1231 1231 1"
str.delete "\s\n"
#=> "12312312313123123112311"
You could use String#delete! to modify str in place, but note delete! returns nil if no change is made
Alternatively you could scan the string for digits /\d+/ and join the result:
string = "123\n\n12312313\n\n123 1231 1231 1\n"
string.scan(/\d+/).join
#=> "12312312313123123112311"
Please note that this would also remove alphabetical characters, dashes, symbols, basically everything that is not a digit.
Suppose I have the following string:
mystring = "start/abc123/end"
How can you splice out the abc123 with something else, while leaving the "/start/" and "/end" elements intact?
I had the following to match for the pattern, but it replaces the entire string. I was hoping to just have it replace the abc123 with 123abc.
mystring.gsub(/start\/(.*)\/end/,"123abc") #=> "123abc"
Edit: The characters between the start & end elements can be any combination of alphanumeric characters, I changed my example to reflect this.
You can do it using this character class : [^\/] (all that is not a slash) and lookarounds
mystring.gsub(/(?<=start\/)[^\/]+(?=\/end)/,"7")
For your example, you could perhaps use:
mystring.gsub(/\/(.*?)\//,"/7/")
This will match the two slashes between the string you're replacing and putting them back in the substitution.
Alternatively, you could capture the pieces of the string you want to keep and interpolate them around your replacement, this turns out to be much more readable than lookaheads/lookbehinds:
irb(main):010:0> mystring.gsub(/(start)\/.*\/(end)/, "\\1/7/\\2")
=> "start/7/end"
\\1 and \\2 here refer to the numbered captures inside of your regular expression.
The problem is that you're replacing the entire matched string, "start/8/end", with "7". You need to include the matched characters you want to persist:
mystring.gsub(/start\/(.*)\/end/, "start/7/end")
Alternatively, just match the digits:
mystring.gsub(/\d+/, "7")
You can do this by grouping the start and end elements in the regular expression and then referring to these groups in in the substitution string:
mystring.gsub(/(?<start>start\/).*(?<end>\/end)/, "\\<start>7\\<end>")
I have a bunch of input files in a loop and I am extracting tag from them. However, I want to separate some of the words. The incoming strings are in the form cs### where ### => is any number from 0-9. I want the result to be cs ###. The closest answer I found was this, Regex to separate Numeric from Alpha . But I cannot get this to work, as the string is being predefined (Static) and mine changes.
Found answer:
Nevermind, I found the answer the following sperates alpha-numeric characters and removes any unwanted non-alphanumeric characters so anything like ab5#6$% =>ab 56
gsub(/(?<=[0-9])(?=[a-z])|(?<=[a-z])(?=[0-9])/i, ' ').gsub(/[^0-9a-z ]/i, ' ')
If your string is something like
str = "cs3232
cs23
cs423"
Then you can do something like
str.scan(/((cs)(\d{1,10}))/m).collect{|e| e.shift; e }
# [["cs", "3232"], ["cs", "23"], ["cs", "423"]]
I have unfortunately wandered into a situation where I need regex using Ruby. Basically I want to match this string after the underscore and before the first parentheses. So the end result would be 'table salt'.
_____ table salt (1) [F]
As usual I tried to fight this battle on my own and with rubular.com. I got the first part
^_____ (Match the beginning of the string with underscores ).
Then I got bolder,
^_____(.*?) ( Do the first part of the match, then give me any amount of words and letters after it )
Regex had had enough and put an end to that nonsense and crapped out. So I was wondering if anyone on stackoverflow knew or would have any hints on how to say my goal to the Ruby Regex parser.
EDIT: Thanks everyone, this is the pattern I ended up using after creating it with rubular.
ingredientNameRegex = /^_+([^(]*)/;
Everything got better once I took a deep breath, and thought about what I was trying to say.
str = "_____ table salt (1) [F]"
p str[ /_{3}\s(.+?)\s+\(/, 1 ]
#=> "table salt"
That says:
Find at least three underscores
and a whitespace character (\s)
and then one or more (+) of any character (.), but as little as possible (?), up until you find
one or more whitespace characters,
and then a literal (
The parens in the middle save that bit, and the 1 pulls it out.
Try this: ^[_]+([^(]*)\(
It will match lines starting with one or more underscores followed by anything not equal to an opening bracket: http://rubular.com/r/vthpGpVr4y
Here's working regex:
str = "_____ table salt (1) [F]"
match = str.match(/_([^_]+?)\(/)
p match[1].strip # => "table salt"
You could use
^_____\s*([^(]+?)\s*\(
^_____ match the underscore from the beginning of string
\s* matches any whitespace character
( grouping start
[^(]+ matches all non ( character at least once
? matches the shortest possible string (non greedy)
) grouping end
\s* matches any whitespace character
\( find the (
"_____ table salt (1) [F]".gsub(/[_]\s(.+)\s\(/, ' >>>\1<<< ')
# => "____ >>>table salt<<< 1) [F]"
It seems to me the simplest regex to do what you want is:
/^_____ ([\w\s]+) /
That says:
leading underscores, space, then capture any combination of word chars or spaces, then another space.
I have a string like "{some|words|are|here}" or "{another|set|of|words}"
So in general the string consists of an opening curly bracket,words delimited by a pipe and a closing curly bracket.
What is the most efficient way to get the selected word of that string ?
I would like do something like this:
#my_string = "{this|is|a|test|case}"
#my_string.get_column(0) # => "this"
#my_string.get_column(2) # => "is"
#my_string.get_column(4) # => "case"
What should the method get_column contain ?
So this is the solution I like right now:
class String
def get_column(n)
self =~ /\A\{(?:\w*\|){#{n}}(\w*)(?:\|\w*)*\}\Z/ && $1
end
end
We use a regular expression to make sure that the string is of the correct format, while simultaneously grabbing the correct column.
Explanation of regex:
\A is the beginnning of the string and \Z is the end, so this regex matches the enitre string.
Since curly braces have a special meaning we escape them as \{ and \} to match the curly braces at the beginning and end of the string.
next, we want to skip the first n columns - we don't care about them.
A previous column is some number of letters followed by a vertical bar, so we use the standard \w to match a word-like character (includes numbers and underscore, but why not) and * to match any number of them. Vertical bar has a special meaning, so we have to escape it as \|. Since we want to group this, we enclose it all inside non-capturing parens (?:\w*\|) (the ?: makes it non-capturing).
Now we have n of the previous columns, so we tell the regex to match the column pattern n times using the count regex - just put a number in curly braces after a pattern. We use standard string substition, so we just put in {#{n}} to mean "match the previous pattern exactly n times.
the first non skipped column after that is the one we care about, so we put that in capturing parens: (\w*)
then we skip the rest of the columns, if any exist: (?:\|\w*)*.
Capturing the column puts it into $1, so we return that value if the regex matched. If not, we return nil, since this String has no nth column.
In general, if you wanted to have more than just words in your columns (like "{a phrase or two|don't forget about punctuation!|maybe some longer strings that have\na newline or two?}"), then just replace all the \w in the regex with [^|{}] so you can have each column contain anything except a curly-brace or a vertical bar.
Here's my previous solution
class String
def get_column(n)
raise "not a column string" unless self =~ /\A\{\w*(?:\|\w*)*\}\Z/
self[1 .. -2].split('|')[n]
end
end
We use a similar regex to make sure the String contains a set of columns or raise an error. Then we strip the curly braces from the front and back (using self[1 .. -2] to limit to the substring starting at the first character and ending at the next to last), split the columns using the pipe character (using .split('|') to create an array of columns), and then find the n'th column (using standard Array lookup with [n]).
I just figured as long as I was using the regex to verify the string, I might as well use it to capture the column.