How do I convert a comma-separated string into an array?

ruby arrays string csv
Mark Szymanski picture Mark Szymanski · Jan 31, 2011 · Viewed 66k times · Source

Is there any way to convert a comma separated string into an array in Ruby? For instance, if I had a string like this:

"one,two,three,four"

How would I convert it into an array like this?

["one", "two", "three", "four"]

Answer

Kevin Sylvestre picture Kevin Sylvestre · Jan 31, 2011

Use the split method to do it:

"one,two,three,four".split(',')
# ["one","two","three","four"]

If you want to ignore leading / trailing whitespace use:

"one , two , three , four".split(/\s*,\s*/)
# ["one", "two", "three", "four"]

If you want to parse multiple lines (i.e. a CSV file) into separate arrays:

require "csv"
CSV.parse("one,two\nthree,four")
# [["one","two"],["three","four"]]

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