Question

What is the most elegant way to split a value and units, so you have:

13min.some_method["value"] = 13
13min.some_method["unit"] = "min"

I think it should use unpack or split, but I can get it to work!

Answer 1

How about String#scan:

>> "13min".scan(/\d+|[^\d]+/)
=> ["13", "min"]

Another way:

>> i = "13min" =~ /[^\d]/
=> 2
>> "13min"[0,i]
=> "13"
>> "13min"[i,"13min".length]
=> "min"

The reason String#split isn’t the best is because it gets rid of the delimiter, but your two strings are butted up against each other.