Question

I have a string.

'ABCXDEFXABCYXYABC'

I want to have them separated by one space. The known patterns in this string are:

ABC
X
DEF
Y

The resulting string should be

'ABC X DEF X ABC Y X Y ABC'

a = 'ABCXDEFXABCYXYABC'
b = a.gsub(/[^ ]\((ABC|DEF|X|Y)\)[^ ]/,' \1 ')

I am not having luck with my gsub regex.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You’re making it too complicated:

1.9.3p194 :001 > a = 'ABCXDEFXABCYXYABC'
 => "ABCXDEFXABCYXYABC" 
1.9.3p194 :002 > a.gsub(/ABC|DEF|X|Y/, '\0 ').strip
 => "ABC X DEF X ABC Y X Y ABC"