Question

I’d like to get a word list from a text file using Ruby. I found how to use regex to parse only words here, so I made a script like following:

src = File.open("text.txt")
word_list = []
src.each do |line|
  word_list << line.downcase.split(/[^[:alpha:]]/).delete_if {|x| x == ""}
end
word_list.flatten!.uniq!.sort!
p word_list

And the following is a sample text file text.txt:

TextMate may be the latest craze for developing Ruby on Rails
applications, but Vim is forever. This plugin offers the following
features for Ruby on Rails application development.

1. Automatically detects buffers containing files from Rails applications, and applies settings to those buffers (and only those
   buffers). You can use an autocommand to apply your own custom
   settings as well.

2. Unintrusive. Only files in a Rails application should be affected; regular Ruby scripts are left untouched. Even when enabled, the
   plugin should keep out of your way if you’re not using its features.

3. Easy navigation of the Rails directory structure. gf considers context and knows about partials, fixtures, and much more. There are
   two commands, :A (alternate) and :R (related) for easy jumping between
   files, including favorites like model to migration, template to
   helper, and controller to functional test. For more advanced usage,
   :Rmodel, :Rview, :Rcontroller, and several other commands are
   provided.

As a Ruby novice, I’d like to learn better (more clear, concise, and following conventions) solutions for this problem.

Thanks for any advices and corrections.

Answer 1

A more idiomatic code would be:

word_list = open("text.txt")
  .lines
  .flat_map { |line| line.downcase.split(/[^[:alpha:]]/).reject(&:empty?) }
  .uniq
  .sort