Ruby - parsing a text file

Question

I am pretty new to Ruby and have been trying some really basic text parsing. I am now however trying to parse a little bit more of a complicated file and then push it out into a csv file (which I havent done before) and am getting quite stuck.

The file looks as follows,

Title
some text
some different text
Publisher: name
Published Date: date
Number1: number
Number2: number
Number3: number
Category: category
----------------------
Title
some text
some different text
Publisher: name
Published Date: date
Number1: number
Number2: number
Number3: number
Category: category
----------------------

etc.

Each line would represent a new "column" in the csv.

Would anyone please be able to lend a hand?

Thank you so much!

All ive done is simple things like this... not even really sure where to start with something more complex :( file = File.new("readfile.rb", "r") while (line = file.gets) puts line end file.close — kay85
– kay85, Commented Apr 3, 2011 at 8:02

kurumi · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-03 08:05:01Z

26

Here's a general idea for you to start with

File.open( thefile ).each do |line|
    print line without the new line if line does not contain  /--+/
    if line contains /--+/
        print line with a new line
    end
end

answered Apr 3, 2011 at 8:05

kurumi

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go2null · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-05 17:53:20Z

5

Here's one complete solution. Note that it's very sensitive to the file structure!

out_file = File.open('your_csv_file.csv', 'w')
out_file.puts "Title,Publisher,Publishedate,Number1,Number2,Number3,Category"
the_line = []
in_title = false
IO.foreach('your_file_name') do |line|
  if line =~ /^-+$/
    out_file.puts the_line.join(',')
    the_line = []
  elsif line =~ /^Title$/
    in_title = true
  elsif line =~ /^(?:Publishe(?:r|d Date)|Number\d|Category):\s+(.*?)$/
    the_line += [$1]
    in_title = false
  elsif in_title
    the_line[0] = (the_line.empty? ?  line.chomp : "\"#{the_line[0]} #{line.chomp}\"")
  else
    puts "Error: don't know what to do with line #{line}"
  end
end
out_file.close

edited Dec 5, 2016 at 17:53

go2null

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answered Apr 3, 2011 at 11:01

Elad

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Comments

Justin Vallely · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-11 21:22:27Z

0

Ruby 2.6.5

some_file = "/path/to/file.extension"

if File.exist?(some_file)
    File.open(some_file).each do |line|
        if line.include?('some_string')
            puts "line: #{line}"
        end
    end
end

answered Oct 11, 2021 at 21:22

Justin Vallely

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