Splitting strings on spaces, unless inside quotes
Richard Livsey
such that...
some words "some quoted text" some more words
would get split up into:
["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
So far I'm drawing a blank on the 'Ruby way' to do this and the only
solutions I can think of are turning out to be fairly ugly.
Any advice would be great. Thanks in advance.
--
R.Livsey
http://livsey.org
Eero Saynatkari
Naively, you can try something like this:
s = 'foo bar "baz quux" roo'
s.scan(/(?:"")|(?:"(.*[^\\])")|(\w+)/).flatten.compact
Elaborate as necessary (add support for single quotes or something).
> R.Livsey
E
Tim Heaney
> I want to split a string into words, but group quoted words together
> such that...
>
> some words "some quoted text" some more words
>
> would get split up into:
>
> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
How about the csv module? Despite the name, you don't have to use
commas.
require 'csv'
CSV::parse_line('some words "some quoted text" some more words', ' ')
I hope this helps,
Tim
James Edward Gray II
I agree that CSV is the way to go, but here's a direct attempt:
>> example = %Q{some words "some quoted text" some more words}
=> "some words \"some quoted text\" some more words"
>> example.scan(/\s+|\w+|"[^"]*"/).
?> reject { |token| token =~ /^\s+$/ }.
?> map { |token| token.sub(/^"/, "").sub(/"$/, "") }
=> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
Hope that gives you some fresh ideas.
James Edward Gray II
Matthew Moss
>
> would get split up into:
>
> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
s = 'some words "some quoted text" some more words
sa = s.split(/"/).collect { |x| x.strip }
(0...sa.size).to_a.zip(sa).collect { |i,x| (i&1).zero? ? x.split : x }.flatten
Michael 'entropie' Trommer
> >> example = %Q{some words "some quoted text" some more words}
> => "some words \"some quoted text\" some more words"
> >> example.scan(/\s+|\w+|"[^"]*"/).
> ?> reject { |token| token =~ /^\s+$/ }.
> ?> map { |token| token.sub(/^"/, "").sub(/"$/, "") }
> => ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
impressive
So long
--
Michael 'entropie' Trommer; http://ackro.org
ruby -e "0.upto((a='njduspAhnbjm/dpn').size-1){|x| a[x]-=1}; p 'mailto:'+a"
Matthew Moss
Just realized that Range responds to zip, so the to_a is unnecessary.
This looks slightly cleaner to me:
(1..sa.size).zip(sa).collect { |i,x| (i&1).zero? ? x : x.split }.flatten
Xavier Noria
> I want to split a string into words, but group quoted words
> together such that...
>
> some words "some quoted text" some more words
>
> would get split up into:
>
> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
Curiously, someone asked exactly that on freenode#perl tonight.
If the input is that simple and is assumed to be well-formed this is
enough:
irb(main):005:0> %q{some words "some quoted text" some "" more
words}.scan(/"[^"]*"|\S+/)
=> ["some", "words", "\"some quoted text\"", "some", "\"\"", "more",
"words"]
Since nothing was said about this, it does not handle escaped quotes,
and it assumes quotes are always balanced, so a field cannot be %q
{"foo}, for example.
-- fxn
dbl...@wobblini.net
On Sat, 7 Jan 2006, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Jan 6, 2006, at 6:08 PM, Richard Livsey wrote:
>
>> I want to split a string into words, but group quoted words together such
>> that...
>>
>> some words "some quoted text" some more words
>>
>> would get split up into:
>>
>> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
>>
>> So far I'm drawing a blank on the 'Ruby way' to do this and the only
>> solutions I can think of are turning out to be fairly ugly.
>>
>> Any advice would be great. Thanks in advance.
>
> I agree that CSV is the way to go, but here's a direct attempt:
Me too (end of disclaimer :-)
>>> example = %Q{some words "some quoted text" some more words}
> => "some words \"some quoted text\" some more words"
>>> example.scan(/\s+|\w+|"[^"]*"/).
> ?> reject { |token| token =~ /^\s+$/ }.
> ?> map { |token| token.sub(/^"/, "").sub(/"$/, "") }
> => ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
I think you could do less work:
example.scan(/"[^"]+"|\S+/).map { |word| word.delete('"') }
(Or am I overlooking some reason you'd want to capture sequences of
spaces?)
I changed the \w+ to \S+ (and moved it after the | to avoid having it
sponge up too much) in case the words included non-\w characters.
I guess with zero-width positive lookbehind/ahead one could do it
without the map operation.
David
--
David A. Black
dbl...@wobblini.net
"Ruby for Rails", from Manning Publications, coming April 2006!
http://www.manning.com/books/black
James Edward Gray II
>>>> example = %Q{some words "some quoted text" some more words}
>> => "some words \"some quoted text\" some more words"
>>>> example.scan(/\s+|\w+|"[^"]*"/).
>> ?> reject { |token| token =~ /^\s+$/ }.
>> ?> map { |token| token.sub(/^"/, "").sub(/"$/, "") }
>> => ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
>
> I think you could do less work:
>
> example.scan(/"[^"]+"|\S+/).map { |word| word.delete('"') }
>
> (Or am I overlooking some reason you'd want to capture sequences of
> spaces?)
>
> I changed the \w+ to \S+ (and moved it after the | to avoid having it
> sponge up too much) in case the words included non-\w characters.
You're right, that's better all around.
> I guess with zero-width positive lookbehind/ahead one could do it
> without the map operation.
You can drop the map(), if you're willing to replace it with two
other calls:
>> example = %Q{some words "some quoted text" some more words}
=> "some words \"some quoted text\" some more words"
>> example.scan(/"([^"]+)"|(\S+)/).flatten.compact
=> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
James Edward Gray II
Florian Groß
> I want to split a string into words, but group quoted words together
> such that...
>
> some words "some quoted text" some more words
>
> would get split up into:
>
> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
Try this:
> irb(main):001:0> require 'shellwords'; Shellwords.shellwords 'some words "some quoted text" some more words'
> => ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
ara.t....@noaa.gov
briliant!
-a
--
===============================================================================
| ara [dot] t [dot] howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
| all happiness comes from the desire for others to be happy. all misery
| comes from the desire for oneself to be happy.
| -- bodhicaryavatara
===============================================================================
William James
> I want to split a string into words, but group quoted words together
> such that...
>
> some words "some quoted text" some more words
>
> would get split up into:
>
> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
s = 'some words "some quoted text" some more words'
p s.split( / *"(.*?)" *| / )
Geoff Jacobsen
Which along with the CSV solution can't handle complex cases:
s='one two" "\'with quotes\' "three "'
s.split( / *"(.*?)" *| / )
=> ["one", "two", " ", "'with", "quotes'", "three "]
require 'csv'
CSV::parse_line(s)
=> []
but Shellwords can:
require 'shellwords'
Shellwords.shellwords(s)
=> ["one", "two with quotes", "three "]
Robert Klemme
Another option is to use scan instead of split:
>> 'some words "some quoted text" some more words'.scan
%r{"(?:(?:[^"]|\\.)*)"|\S+}
=> ["some", "words", "\"some quoted text\"", "some", "more", "words"]
With some additional effort even the quotes can be removed (using grouping
for example).
>> r=[];'some words "some quoted text" some more
words'.scan(%r{"((?:[^"]|\\.)*)"|(\S+)}) {|m| r << m.detect {|x|x}};r
=> ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
Kind regards
robert
William James
This is not a "more complex case"; it is an invalid case.
The original poster simply wanted to avoid splitting on spaces
within double quotes, not within single quotes.
The shellwords "solution" is a solution to a different problem, not
to this one. It can't even handle a simple case:
require 'shellwords'
s = "why can't you think?"
Shellwords.shellwords(s)
ArgumentError: Unmatched single quote: 't you think?
Geoff Jacobsen
> Geoff Jacobsen wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 18:13 +0900, William James wrote:
> > > Richard Livsey wrote:
> > > > I want to split a string into words, but group quoted words together
> > > > such that...
> > > >
> > > > some words "some quoted text" some more words
> > > >
> > > > would get split up into:
> > > >
> > > > ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
> > >
> > > s = 'some words "some quoted text" some more words'
> > > p s.split( / *"(.*?)" *| / )
> >
> > Which along with the CSV solution can't handle complex cases:
> >
> > s='one two" "\'with quotes\' "three "'
> >
> > s.split( / *"(.*?)" *| / )
> > => ["one", "two", " ", "'with", "quotes'", "three "]
> > but Shellwords can:
> >
> > require 'shellwords'
> > Shellwords.shellwords(s)
> > => ["one", "two with quotes", "three "]
>
> This is not a "more complex case"; it is an invalid case.
> The original poster simply wanted to avoid splitting on spaces
> within double quotes, not within single quotes.
>
> The shellwords "solution" is a solution to a different problem, not
> to this one. It can't even handle a simple case:
>
> require 'shellwords'
> s = "why can't you think?"
> Shellwords.shellwords(s)
>
> ArgumentError: Unmatched single quote: 't you think?
>
I agree my example doesn't match the originators request but *I think*
there is enough ambiguity about the post to postulate that they may want
more real-world cases such as:
s='symbol "William said: \"why can't you think?\"" 123 "<xml>foo</xml>"'
Shellwords.shellwords(s)
=> ["symbol", "William said: \"why can't you think?\"", "123",
"<xml>foo</xml>"]
So Shellwords may indeed be a solution to this problem but the problem
is not stated precisely enough to know.