Comments on: Handling Ruby’s String.each_char Iterator

By: John P

John P — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:57:03 +0000

I needed this to do a simple cleanup of strings entered by the default io.readline call. If the user hit backspace, the \b would get added to the string along w/the characters they were trying to get rid of. Here’s an inelegant solution:

def clean(line)
#silly little routine to parse backspaces in the input line…
retval = “”
line.each_byte do |ch|
if ch == 8 #backspace
retval.chop!
else
retval << ch
end
end
return retval
end

By: Travis B

Travis B — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:14:55 +0000

If you click on the source in the docs, you get:

# File lib/jcode.rb, line 209
def each_char
if block_given?
scan(/./m) do |x|
yield x
end
else
scan(/./m)
end
end

so yeah, just do “string”.scan(/./m)

By: admin

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:05:24 +0000

@Nick Great comment, I don't work with a whole lot of multi-byte character encodings. In this case, Jcode would be the way to go for Ruby 1.8. I haven't played much with Ruby 1.9 but I am excited to play with the better supported encodings that are baked right in.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:10:21 +0000

Another “thanks” on the pile!

Will, unfortunately each_byte can cause problems with multi-byte character encodings.

By: Marco

Marco — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:51:39 +0000

Man thank you so much for this, you have no idea how your insight helped me !

Thanks from Brazil
Marco

By: EndtheProhibition

EndtheProhibition — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:42:58 +0000

Thanks man! That’s what I was looking for.
“string”.each_byte { |f| puts f.chr }

By: brian

brian — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:12:33 +0000

Thanks so much for posting about this error in Ruby 1.8.6. I found your posting on the front page of my Google search results [ruby string each_char]. You saved me a lot of time and frustration.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:34:47 +0000

You are all welcome

By: ruby_n00b

ruby_n00b — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:53:56 +0000

As 100% of the commenters have commented so far: THANK YOU. I am yet another person who was stuck going cross-eyed over this error. I figure another comment on this post might help google to keep this page “fresh” and high in the google stats. So thanks again!

By: chris

chris — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:30:36 +0000

Thanks!