Snoopy Dog wrote: > Works fine, but I really don't care about the information past the date > field. > Additionally, I have another set of files that have a column after the > vol, I am not sure how to handle it in the regular Expression. > > I just want to do: > (symbol, date, ignore_the_rest) = row.split(/,/) for just the first > two columns. I am off to read more on regular expressions. Hi there, The split method just returns an array of every item on either side of the delimiter... p row.split(/,/) # => ["abc", " 20060901", " 1.5", " 2.1", " 1.4", " 1.9", " 123456\n"] You can assign it to a variable: a = row.split(/,/) a[0] You can index it anonymously: row.split(/,/)[0] Or unpack some (or all) members of it: symbol, date = row.split(/,/)[0..1] # .. is a range operator And so on. I think you want something like the last example, but unless you need the symbol too, you can just use: date = row.split(/,/)[1] An extra column at the end of the rows won't effect anything. Regards, Jordan