Ruby String Strip Defined Characters

Ruby string strip defined characters

There is no such method in ruby, but you can easily define it like:

def my_strip(string, chars)
  chars = Regexp.escape(chars)
  string.gsub(/\A[#{chars}]+|[#{chars}]+\z/, "")
end

my_strip " [la[]la] ", " []"
#=> "la[]la"

Strip ruby string of a specific control character

I figured it out! .gsub(/\u2028/, '')

Deleting all special characters from a string - ruby

You can do this

a.gsub!(/[^0-9A-Za-z]/, '')

How to achieve Python like string strip in Ruby?

You can use regular expressions:

"atestabctestcb".gsub(/(^[abc]*)|([abc]*$)/, '')
# => "testabctest"

Of course you can make this a method as well:

def strip_arbitrary(s, chars)
    r = chars.chars.map { |c| Regexp.quote(c) }.join
    s.gsub(/(^[#{r}]*)|([#{r}]*$)/, '')
end

strip_arbitrary("foobar", "fra") # => "oob"

How can I remove non-printable invisible characters from string?

First, let's figure out what the offending character is:

str = "Kanha‬"
p str.codepoints
# => [75, 97, 110, 104, 97, 8236]

The first five codepoints are between 0 and 127, meaning they're ASCII characters. It's safe to assume they're the letters K-a-n-h-a, although this is easy to verify if you want:

p [75, 97, 110, 104, 97].map(&:ord)
# => ["K", "a", "n", "h", "a"]

That means the offending character is the last one, codepoint 8236. That's a decimal (base 10) number, though, and Unicode characters are usually listed by their hexadecimal (base 16) number. 8236 in hexadecimal is 202C (8236.to_s(16) # => "202c"), so we just have to google for U+202C.

Google very quickly tells us that the offending character is U+202C POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING and that it's a member of the "Other, Format" category of Unicode characters. Wikipedia says of this category:

Includes the soft hyphen, joining control characters (zwnj and zwj), control characters to support bi-directional text, and language tag characters

It also tells us that the "value" or code for the category is "Cf". If these sound like characters you want to remove from your string along with U+202C, you can use the \p{Cf} property in a Ruby regular expression. You can also use \P{Print} (note the capital P) as an equivalent to [^[:print]]:

str = "Kanha‬"
p str.length # => 6

p str.gsub(/\P{Print}|\p{Cf}/, '') # => "Kahna"
p str.gsub(/\P{Print}|\p{Cf}/, '').length # => 5

See it on repl.it: https://repl.it/@jrunning/DutifulRashTag

Remove everything after some characters

This can be relatively easily accomplished by running split("More info") on your strings. What that does is breaks the string in to an array like so:

new_string  = "Posted today More info Go to Last Post"
new_string = new_string.split("More info")
# becomes ["Posted today ", " Go to Last Post"]

What split does is it breaks a string apart in to an array, where each element is what preceded the argument. So if you have "1,2,3" then split(",") will return [1, 2, 3]

So to continue your solution, you can get the posting date like this:

new_string[0].strip

.strip removes spaces at the front or back of a string, so you'll be left with just "Posted today"

Remove character from string if it starts with that character?

Why not just include the regex in the sub! method?

string.sub!(/^1/, '')

How do I remove a substring after a certain character in a string using Ruby?

new_str = str.slice(0..(str.index('blah')))

What is the easiest way to remove the first character from a string?

I kind of favor using something like:

asdf = "[12,23,987,43"
asdf[0] = '' 

p asdf
# >> "12,23,987,43"

---

I'm always looking for the fastest and most readable way of doing things:

require 'benchmark'

N = 1_000_000

puts RUBY_VERSION

STR = "[12,23,987,43"

Benchmark.bm(7) do |b|
  b.report('[0]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[0] = '' } }
  b.report('sub') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".sub(/^\[+/, "") } }

  b.report('gsub') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".gsub(/^\[/, "") } }
  b.report('[1..-1]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[1..-1] } }
  b.report('slice') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".slice!(0) } }
  b.report('length') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[1..STR.length] } }

end

Running on my Mac Pro:

1.9.3
              user     system      total        real
[0]       0.840000   0.000000   0.840000 (  0.847496)
sub       1.960000   0.010000   1.970000 (  1.962767)
gsub      4.350000   0.020000   4.370000 (  4.372801)
[1..-1]   0.710000   0.000000   0.710000 (  0.713366)
slice     1.020000   0.000000   1.020000 (  1.020336)
length    1.160000   0.000000   1.160000 (  1.157882)

---

Updating to incorporate one more suggested answer:

require 'benchmark'

N = 1_000_000

class String
  def eat!(how_many = 1)
    self.replace self[how_many..-1]
  end

  def first(how_many = 1)
    self[0...how_many]
  end

  def shift(how_many = 1)
    shifted = first(how_many)
    self.replace self[how_many..-1]
    shifted
  end
  alias_method :shift!, :shift
end

class Array
  def eat!(how_many = 1)
    self.replace self[how_many..-1]
  end
end

puts RUBY_VERSION

STR = "[12,23,987,43"

Benchmark.bm(7) do |b|
  b.report('[0]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[0] = '' } }
  b.report('sub') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".sub(/^\[+/, "") } }

  b.report('gsub') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".gsub(/^\[/, "") } }
  b.report('[1..-1]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[1..-1] } }
  b.report('slice') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".slice!(0) } }
  b.report('length') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[1..STR.length] } }
  b.report('eat!') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".eat! } }
  b.report('reverse') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".reverse.chop.reverse } }
end

Which results in:

2.1.2
              user     system      total        real
[0]       0.300000   0.000000   0.300000 (  0.295054)
sub       0.630000   0.000000   0.630000 (  0.631870)
gsub      2.090000   0.000000   2.090000 (  2.094368)
[1..-1]   0.230000   0.010000   0.240000 (  0.232846)
slice     0.320000   0.000000   0.320000 (  0.320714)
length    0.340000   0.000000   0.340000 (  0.341918)
eat!      0.460000   0.000000   0.460000 (  0.452724)
reverse   0.400000   0.000000   0.400000 (  0.399465)

---

And another using /^./ to find the first character:

require 'benchmark'

N = 1_000_000

class String
  def eat!(how_many = 1)
    self.replace self[how_many..-1]
  end

  def first(how_many = 1)
    self[0...how_many]
  end

  def shift(how_many = 1)
    shifted = first(how_many)
    self.replace self[how_many..-1]
    shifted
  end
  alias_method :shift!, :shift
end

class Array
  def eat!(how_many = 1)
    self.replace self[how_many..-1]
  end
end

puts RUBY_VERSION

STR = "[12,23,987,43"

Benchmark.bm(7) do |b|
  b.report('[0]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[0] = '' } }
  b.report('[/^./]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[/^./] = '' } }
  b.report('[/^\[/]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[/^\[/] = '' } }
  b.report('sub+') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".sub(/^\[+/, "") } }
  b.report('sub') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".sub(/^\[/, "") } }
  b.report('gsub') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".gsub(/^\[/, "") } }
  b.report('[1..-1]') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[1..-1] } }
  b.report('slice') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".slice!(0) } }
  b.report('length') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43"[1..STR.length] } }
  b.report('eat!') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".eat! } }
  b.report('reverse') { N.times { "[12,23,987,43".reverse.chop.reverse } }
end

Which results in:

# >> 2.1.5
# >>               user     system      total        real
# >> [0]       0.270000   0.000000   0.270000 (  0.270165)
# >> [/^./]    0.430000   0.000000   0.430000 (  0.432417)
# >> [/^\[/]   0.460000   0.000000   0.460000 (  0.458221)
# >> sub+      0.590000   0.000000   0.590000 (  0.590284)
# >> sub       0.590000   0.000000   0.590000 (  0.596366)
# >> gsub      1.880000   0.010000   1.890000 (  1.885892)
# >> [1..-1]   0.230000   0.000000   0.230000 (  0.223045)
# >> slice     0.300000   0.000000   0.300000 (  0.299175)
# >> length    0.320000   0.000000   0.320000 (  0.325841)
# >> eat!      0.410000   0.000000   0.410000 (  0.409306)
# >> reverse   0.390000   0.000000   0.390000 (  0.393044)

---

Here's another update on faster hardware and a newer version of Ruby:

2.3.1
              user     system      total        real
[0]       0.200000   0.000000   0.200000 (  0.204307)
[/^./]    0.390000   0.000000   0.390000 (  0.387527)
[/^\[/]   0.360000   0.000000   0.360000 (  0.360400)
sub+      0.490000   0.000000   0.490000 (  0.492083)
sub       0.480000   0.000000   0.480000 (  0.487862)
gsub      1.990000   0.000000   1.990000 (  1.988716)
[1..-1]   0.180000   0.000000   0.180000 (  0.181673)
slice     0.260000   0.000000   0.260000 (  0.266371)
length    0.270000   0.000000   0.270000 (  0.267651)
eat!      0.400000   0.010000   0.410000 (  0.398093)
reverse   0.340000   0.000000   0.340000 (  0.344077)

---

Why is gsub so slow?

After doing a search/replace, gsub has to check for possible additional matches before it can tell if it's finished. sub only does one and finishes. Consider gsub like it's a minimum of two sub calls.

Also, it's important to remember that gsub, and sub can also be handicapped by poorly written regex which match much more slowly than a sub-string search. If possible anchor the regex to get the most speed from it. There are answers here on Stack Overflow demonstrating that so search around if you want more information.

---

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