CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyunicode
Markus
Markus

Reputation: 1822

Why doesn't this Unicode gsub substitution work in Ruby?

In another question it was asked how to replace Umlaute. The accepted question was the following code:

# encoding: utf-8
foo = "ich bin doch nicht blöd, mann!".gsub(/[äöü]/) do |match|
    case match
        when "ä" 'ae'
        when "ö" 'oe'
        when "ü" 'ue'
    end
end
puts foo

However, when I try to run this, the output is:

$ ruby /tmp/test.rb 
ich bin doch nicht bld, mann!

So the Umlaute obviously don't get replaced. Is there something I am missing? I'm using Ruby 1.9.3p362 (2012-12-25 revision 38607) [x86_64-linux]

Upvotes: 1

Views: 921

Answers (3)

steenslag
steenslag

Reputation: 80065

(Not a real answer to the question, but a bit large for a comment.) gsub has syntax for this kind of substitution, using a Hash:

#encoding: utf-8
table = {"ä" => 'ae',
         "ö" => 'oe',
         "ü" => 'ue'}
re = Regexp.union(table.keys)
# re = /[äöü]/ # is fine too
p "ich bin doch nicht blöd, mann!".gsub(re, table)
# => "ich bin doch nicht bloed, mann!"

Upvotes: 2

Esailija
Esailija

Reputation: 140210

You are using incorrect syntax, you either need to use then or a newline and indentation.

# encoding: utf-8
foo = "ich bin doch nicht blöd, mann!".gsub(/[äöü]/) do |match|
    case match
        when "ä" then 'ae'
        when "ö" then 'oe'
        when "ü" then 'ue'
    end
end

puts foo

or

# encoding: utf-8
foo = "ich bin doch nicht blöd, mann!".gsub(/[äöü]/) do |match|
    case match
        when "ä"
            "ae"
        when "ö"
            "oe"
        when "ü"
            "ue"
    end
end

The robust way to do this would be result = Iconv.iconv('ascii//ignore//translit', 'utf-8', foo) but you need to set locale to "de_DE" which cannot be done in ruby without a c extension.

Upvotes: 7

cggaurav
cggaurav

Reputation: 575

"ich bin doch nicht blöd, mann!".gsub("ä","ae").gsub("ö","oe").gsub("ü","ue")

Should do the trick

Upvotes: 2

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