I have a string that contains an array;
"["item1","item2","item3"]"
Is there a slick Ruby way to convert it to this;
["item1","item2","item3"]
Add a comment
|
3 Answers
Ruby has an eval function
irb(main):003:0> x = '["item1","item2","item3"]'
=> "[\"item1\",\"item2\",\"item3\"]"
irb(main):004:0> eval(x)
=> ["item1", "item2", "item3"]
irb(main):005:0>
It might not be safe to use eval, so you might want to consider using Binding too.
6 Comments
Chuck
This will execute arbitrary code. If anyone but you has any influence over the contents of
x, they can potentially control your computer. It is generally not a great idea.
karthikr
@Chuck You are right. Just using
eval is not a good idea. I was editing my answer to use Bindings on top of eval. ThanksChuck
AFAIK it is quite difficult to come up with a binding that is not potentially exploitable, so I would still not feel good about doing this.
SteveO7
I'll use Chuck's answer but yours is very interesting. What is eval used for if it is so unsafe?
7stud
@SteveO7, If it is your string, then it is safe to use eval. There is a family of eval functions in ruby that are used to do advanced stuff.
|
It really depends on the string. A string can't actually contain an array — it can just contain some text that can be parsed into an array given an appropriate parser.
In this case, your string happens to be a valid JSON representation of an array, so you can just do:
JSON.parse("[\"item1\",\"item2\",\"item3\"]")
And you'll get that array with those strings.
Comments
If you write
str = '"["item1","item2","item3"]"'
#=> "\"[\"item1\",\"item2\",\"item3\"]\""
or
str =<<_
"["item1","item2","item3"]"
_
#=> "\"[\"item1\",\"item2\",\"item3\"]\""
or
str = %q{"["item1","item2","item3"]"}
#=> "\"[\"item1\",\"item2\",\"item3\"]\""
then you could write
str.scan(/[a-z0-9]+/)
#=> ["item1", "item2", "item3"]
