How to remove whitespace from string in Ruby

Question

Given this snippet:

require 'date'

raw_data = ["Mon\n                              9:00 -   1:00pm,   2:00 -   6:00pm",
 "Tue\n                            10:00 -   1:00pm,   2:00 -   7:30pm",
 "Wed\n                              9:00 -   1:00pm,   2:00 -   6:00pm",
 "Thu\n                              9:00 -   1:00pm,   2:00 -   6:00pm",
 "Fri\n                              9:00 -   1:00pm,   2:00 -   6:00pm",
 "Sat",
 "Sun"]

 raw_data.each do |element|
  a =  element.gsub(/\n/,',').gsub(/\s+/, '').split(',')

  day = a[0].to_s.downcase!
   "day: #{day}"

  map = { "mon" => "monday","tue" => "tuesday", "wed" => "wednesday", "thu" => "thursday", "fri" => "friday", "sat" => "saturday", "sun" => "sanday" }
  map.each {|k,v| day.gsub!(k,v) }

  day_from = a[1]
  day_from = day_from.to_s.split('-')[0]
  day_to = a[2]
  day_to = day_to.to_s.split('-')[1]
  day_to = day_to.gsub(/pm/,'')  unless day_to.nil?

  # not working??
  day_to = day_to.gsub(/\s+/,'') unless day_to.nil?
  p day_to
 end

How to get this output:

# desired
# "6:00"
# "7:30"
# "6:00"
# "6:00"
# "6:00"
# nil
# nil

Now this code returns:

#
# "  6:00"
# "  7:30"
# "  6:00"
# "  6:00"
# "  6:00"
# nil
# nil

google says to use:

  # not working??
  day_to = day_to.gsub(/\s+/,'') unless day_to.nil?

but this solution somehow does not work...

UPDATE

code with hex code and new input values

require 'date'
require 'hex_string'

raw_data = ["\n                            Mon\n                              8:30 -   6:00pm\n                          ",
 "\n                            Tue\n                              8:30 -   6:00pm\n                          ",
 "\n                            Wed\n                              8:30 -   6:00pm\n                          ",
 "\n                            Thu\n                              8:30 -   6:00pm\n                          ",
 "\n                            Fri\n                              8:30 -   6:00pm\n                          ",
 "\n                            Sat\n                              8:30 -   4:00pm\n                          ",
 "\n                            Sun\n                            10:00 -   3:00pm\n                          "

]

puts raw_data.size

 raw_data.each do |element|
  a =  element.gsub(/\n/,',').gsub(/\s+/, '').split(',')

  day = a[1].to_s.downcase!
  #puts  "day: #{day}"

  map = { "mon" => "monday","tue" => "tuesday", "wed" => "wednesday", "thu" => "thursday", "fri" => "friday", "sat" => "saturday", "sun" => "sanday" }
  map.each {|k,v| day.gsub!(k,v) }

  day_from = a[2]
  day_from = day_from.to_s.split('-')[0]
  day_from.to_s.strip unless day_from.nil?
  p "day regular: #{day_from}"
  p "day from(hex): #{day_from.to_hex_string}"
  p "-----------------------------------------"

  day_to = a[2].to_s.split('-')[1]
  day_to = day_to.gsub(/pm/,'')  unless day_to.nil?

  # not working
  day_to = day_to.gsub(/\s+/,'') unless day_to.nil?
  p "day regular: #{day_to}"
  p "day_to(hex): #{day_to.to_hex_string}"
  p "-----------------------------------------"
 end



"day regular:   8:30"
"day from(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 38 3a 33 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   6:00"
"day_to(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 36 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   8:30"
"day from(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 38 3a 33 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   6:00"
"day_to(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 36 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   8:30"
"day from(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 38 3a 33 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   6:00"
"day_to(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 36 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   8:30"
"day from(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 38 3a 33 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   6:00"
"day_to(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 36 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   8:30"
"day from(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 38 3a 33 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   6:00"
"day_to(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 36 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   8:30"
"day from(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 38 3a 33 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   4:00"
"day_to(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 34 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular: 10:00"
"day from(hex): 31 30 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"
"day regular:   3:00"
"day_to(hex): c2 a0 c2 a0 33 3a 30 30"
"-----------------------------------------"

Answer 1

I am not sure why it's not working for you. I ran your script and it worked for me.

But you can try strip, which removes leading and trailing white spaces:

day_to.strip! unless day_to.nil?

Answer 2

It looks like you have some non-breaking space characters in your file (C2 A0 is the UTF-8 encoding for U+00A0, which is non breaking space).

In Ruby’s regular expressions \s doesn’t match non-breaking spaces, which is why your code doesn’t appear to work (strip also doesn’t remove them). You can use the \p{Space} character property instead, or the POSIX bracket expression [[:space:]].

day_to = day_to.gsub(/\p{Space}/,'') unless day_to.nil?

or

day_to = day_to.gsub(/[[:space:]]/,'') unless day_to.nil?