Question

I have an array of hashes, each hash has two keys : “from” and “to”

@dictionary = [{:to=>"lazy", :from=>"quick"}, {:to=>"flies", :from=>"jumps"}, {:from => "over the", :to => "under the"}]

I have some long string

@text = "quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

How can I replace all occurences of “from” sentences to “to” sentences of the dictionary ?

The output should be:

lazy brown fox flies under the lazy dog

What is the most efficient way ?

Answer 1

@dictionary.each do |pair|
  @text.gsub!(/#{pair[:from]}/, pair[:to])
end

Or if you’d prefer it on a single line:

@dictionary.each { |pair| @text.gsub!(/#{pair[:from]}/, pair[:to]) }

It’s the exact same code, just using { } instead of do end for the block (which tends to be the general Ruby practice).