Question

I am parsing a comma separated string into an array. In C# I have:

var someArray = someString.Split(
    new char[] { ',' },
    StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

foreach (var something in someArray)
{
    SomeList.Add(something.Trim().ToLower());
}

Here is what I have so far in Ruby using Rails .blank?

some_array = some_string.split(',').each { |something| something.strip.downcase }
some_array.delete_if { |something| something.blank? }

Is there a cleaner way to do this?

Answer 1

a) The code you have as written doesn’t do what you expect. You call .each and call non-mutating methods on the strings. As a result, your some_array is the same as some_string.split(',').

b) I would personally do this:

arr = str.split(',').map{ |s| s.blank? ? nil : s.strip.downcase }.compact

This creates an array that may have nil entries, which are then removed with “compact”. If absolute speed is of the essence, though, this will be faster:

arr = []
str.split(',').each do |s|
  arr << s.strip.downcase unless s.blank?
end

Edit: modified code to defer .strip.downcase until after testing for blankness.