Question

I’m trying to parse the values separated by commas in these 4 example sources

1,'Tambaú','Praça Santo António','Tambaú','12x0',2,'I','EM',12,6,5934,50
2,'Beira Rio','Av. Beira Rio,  Prox. Av Odilon Coutinho','Beira Rio','12x0',2,'I','EM',12,0,7249,0
3,'Cabo Branco','Cabo Branco, Prox. Rua Alice de Almeida','Cabo Branco','12x0',2,'I','EO',12,0,4751,0
901,'teste','teste','teste','Mini-estação de demonstração',1,'I','EO',2,1,97,50`

I am using the regex ('?.*?'?), in Ruby. I can get the first and the last parsed like I want. However the problem with 2nd and 3rd is that there is a comma in the name (Av. Beira Rio, Prox. Av Odilon Coutinho and Cabo Branco, Prox. Rua Alice de Almeida). With my regex, these come out separated. For example I get Av. Beira Rio and Prox. Av Odilon Coutinho which is not what I want.

EDIT: I should have specified that this is not from a CSV file. It’s the parameters to a function from a web page source code.

Answer 1

You may use CSV and set :quote_char => "'" to handle the separator inside your fields:

#encoding: utf-8
require 'csv'

input = <<data
1,'Tambaú','Praça Santo António','Tambaú','12x0',2,'I','EM',12,6,5934,50
2,'Beira Rio','Av. Beira Rio, Prox. Av Odilon Coutinho','Beira Rio','12x0',2,'I','EM',12,0,7249,0
3,'Cabo Branco','Cabo Branco, Prox. Rua Alice de Almeida','Cabo Branco','12x0',2,'I','EO',12,0,4751,0
901,'teste','teste','teste','Mini-estação de demonstração',1,'I','EO',2,1,97,50
data

CSV.new(input, :quote_char => "'").each{|data|
  p data.size
  p data  
}

---

If you don’t have a String but an Array as source, you need a little adaption:

#encoding: utf-8
require 'csv'

regexArr = [
  ["1,'Tambaú','Praça Santo António','Tambaú','12x0',2,'I','EM',12,6,5934,50"], 
  ["2,'Beira Rio','Av. Bei ra Rio, Prox. Av Odilon Coutinho','Beira Rio','12x0',2,'I','EM',12,0,7249,0"], 
  ["3,'Cabo Branco','Cabo Bra nco, Prox. Rua Alice de Almeida','Cabo Branco','12x0',2,'I','EO',12,0,4751,0"], 
  ["901,'teste','teste','test e','Mini-estação de demonstração',1,'I','EO',2,1,97,50"]
]

regexArr.each do |loc| 
  CSV.new(loc.first, :quote_char => "'").each do |data| 
    p data
  end 
end

As an alternative you may build a String:

input = regexArr.flatten.join("\n")
CSV.new(input, :quote_char => "'").each{|data|
  p data.size
  p data  
}

Both methods expect an array with one-element-arrays.