CODEWITHSUNDEEP
arraysrubyregex
lumos
lumos

Reputation: 223

Include a regex string in an array

I have an array made up of several strings that I am searching for in another array, like so:

strings_array = ["string1", "string2", "string3"]
main_array = [ ## this is populated with string values outside of my script ## ]

main_array.each { |item|
  if strings_array.any? { |x| main_array.include?(x) }
    main_array.delete(item)
  end
}

This is a simplified version of what my script is actually doing, but that's the gist. It works as is, but I'm wondering how I can make it so that the strings_array can include strings made out of regex. So let's say I have a string in the main_array called "string-4385", and I want to delete any string that is composed of string- + a series of integers (without manually adding in the numerical suffix). I tried this:

strings_array = ["string1", "string2", "string3", /string-\d+/.to_s]

This doesn't work, but that's the logic I'm aiming for. Basically, is there a way to include a string with regex like this within an array? Or is there perhaps a better way than this .any? and include? combo that does the job (without needing to type out the complete string value)?

Thank you for any help!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1924

Answers (2)

Mark Thomas
Mark Thomas

Reputation: 37527

A good way to do this is with Regexp.union, which combines multiple regular expressions into a single regex handy for matching.

patterns = [/pattern1/, /pattern2/, /string-\d+/]
regex = Regexp.union(patterns)
main_array.delete_if{|string| string.match(regex)}

Upvotes: 1

SgtPepper
SgtPepper

Reputation: 468

You can use methods like keep_if and delete_if, so if you want to delete strings that match a regex you could do something like this: 

array = ['string-123', 'test']
array.delete_if{|n| n[/string-\d+/] }

That will delete the strings in the array that do not match your regex. Same thing with keep_if method.

Hope it helps!

Upvotes: 3

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