Ruby string comparison and character encoding in irb

Question

Here is the error:

=> ["Mænd med navnet Kim", "30.094", "29.946", "-148", "Kvinder med navnet Kim",
 "341", "345", "4", "Mænd med navnet Kim Hansen", "1.586", "1.573", "-13", "Kvin
der med navnet Kim Hansen", "5", "5", "0", "Mænd og kvinder med efternavnet Hans
en", "226.040", "223.478", "-2.562"]
irb(main):094:0>
irb(main):095:0* @tester.index("Mænd med navnet Kim")
=> nil
irb(main):096:0> @tester.index("Kvinder med navnet Kim")
=> 4
irb(main):097:0> @tester.index("Mænd med navnet Kim Hansen")
=> nil
irb(main):098:0> @tester.index("Kvinder med navnet Kim Hansen")
=> 12
irb(main):099:0> @tester.index("Mænd og kvinder med efternavnet Hansen")
=> nil
irb(main):100:0>

Example tried Gsub method:

<ap(&:text).map{|d| d.delete "'"}.map{|d| d.gsub("æ", "#844"}
irb(main):113:1> )
SyntaxError: (irb):112: syntax error, unexpected '}', expecting ')'

Among other things, as entered it appears your strings "Kvin der med navnet Kim Hansen" & "Mænd og kvinder med efternavnet Hans en" have newlines in them, and your fourth index call has a ' in it that's not in the string in the array. Also, I assume the array shown is actually in @tester? You don't show the assignment call itself, only the REPL's output. — Andrew Marshall
– Andrew Marshall, Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 4:23
Seems to have something with encoding the æ is giving trouble... — Rails beginner
– Rails beginner, Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 4:28
I think we need to see the @tester assignment. The encodings of the string in the array might be different than the strings you type or paste into irb (just a wild guess). — Casper
– Casper, Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 4:30

Casper · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-09 04:55:53Z

4

Since your input strings seem to be UTF-8, the easiest solution is to run your irb session with the same encoding:

irb -EUTF-8

That should make string entry in the irb command prompt default to UTF-8.

Good resource on Ruby 1.9 encodings:
http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/understanding_m17n

edited Jun 9, 2012 at 4:55

answered Jun 9, 2012 at 4:41

Casper

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2 Comments

Andrew Marshall Over a year ago

You could also ensure that your $LANG environmental variable is set to some UTF-8 language (e.g. en_US.UTF-8), as I believe IRB will use whatever that is set to.

Casper Over a year ago

@AndrewMarshall Yes...agree. Best to unify encodings across the system. Thx.

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