Question

I am new to SmallTalk, I am using VisualWorks. I need to parse a string and insert each char into an array excluding white space and all the punctuation marks. This is not a homework assignment but a part of a big project and I can’t seem to figure it out.
Please help!

Answer 1

It can be as simple as this (I used VSE, but VW shouldn’t be much different):

toThrowAway := #($  $. $, $: $; $! $?). "this contains all the characters that you want to throw away. Simply add anything else you don't want in the result"
(anArray := unparsed reject:[:c| toThrowAway includes: c]) asArray.

EDIT (after your comment):

As I wrote, I’m not using Visual Works, maybe it’s just a different implementation of asString. Is that what you see when you inspect the resulting array or when you display it on a workspace? What’s the size of the resulting Array? Anyway you can try it in a more explicit way:

toThrowAway := #($  $. $, $: $; $! $?). "this contains all the characters that you want to throw away. Simply add anything else you don't want in the result"
parsedString := unparsed reject:[:c| toThrowAway includes: c]).
anArray := Array new: parsedString size.
1 to: parsedString size do: [:i| anArray at: i put: (parsedString at:i)].