On Aug 14, 2007, at 6:00 PM, anitawa wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I want to be able to parse a string and put them into variables.
>
> for example, I have this string:
>
> "Menu: steak_and_egg | date: 0814 | who: Anita"
>
> I want to parse this string to assign variables like so:
>
> menu = "steak_and_egg"
> date = "0814"
> who = "Anita"
>
> What would be the fastest way of doing this.

This might work if your data isn't too complicated:

 >> str = "Menu: steak_and_egg | date: 0814 | who: Anita"
=> "Menu: steak_and_egg | date: 0814 | who: Anita"
 >> Hash[*str.scan(/(\w+):\s*(\w+)/).flatten]
=> {"date"=>"0814", "who"=>"Anita", "Menu"=>"steak_and_egg"}

James Edward Gray II