I'm trying to automate some output using printf but I'm struggling to find a way to pass to it the list of arguments expr_1, ..., expr_n in
printf (dest, string, expr_1, ..., expr_n)
I thought of using something like Javascript's spread operator but I'm not even sure I should need it.
For instace, say I have a list of strings to be output
a:["foo","bar","foobar"];
a string of appropriate format descriptors, say
s: "~a ~a ~a ~%";
and an output stream, say os. How can I invoke printf using these things in such a way that the result will be the same as writing
printf(os,s,a[1],a[2],a[3]);
Then I could generalize it to output lists of variable size.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
EDIT:
I just learned about apply and, using the conditions I posed in my OP, the following seems to work wonderfully:
apply(printf,append([os,s],a));
Maxima printf implements most or maybe all of the formatting operators from Common Lisp FORMAT, which are quite extensive; see: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/22_c.htm See also ? printf in Maxima to get an abbreviated list of formatting operators.
In particular for a list you can do something like:
printf (os, "my list: ~{~a~^, ~}~%", a);
to get the elements of a separated by ,. Here "~{...~}" tells printf to expect a list, and ~a is how to format each element, ~^ means omit the inter-element stuff after the last element, and , means put that between elements. Of course , could be anything.
There are many variations on that; if that's not what you're looking for, maybe I can help you find it.
I am writing an application where a user could fill in their zipcode. In the Netherlands a zipcode has a format of 4 times a number, followed by 2 letters. For example, 1234AB.
In my test I have written so far:
before(:each) do
#zipcode = Zipcode.new
#zipcode.zipcode = "1234AB"
#zipcode.house_number = 2
end
it "should have a valid zipcode" do
#zipcode.zipcode.should_not be_empty
#zipcode.zipcode.should be_a(String)
#zipcode.zipcode.length.should == 6
end
How ca I write the test that it checks if there are 4 numbers followed by 2 letters? And how should I write that in code it self?
You will want to use a Regex (regular expression). For your example, it would be quite simple:
/\A[0-9]{4}[A-Z]{2}\z/
which means: Line start, 4 times a digit, 2 times a uppercase letter, line end.
(I know this might not look simple if you're not familiar with the concept, but just read up on it and it will become clear very quickly. I recommend to read up on regexes in a Ruby context to know about all the quirks of Ruby regular expressions if you don't already.)
To use this regex inside your spec, I think you can use the following:
#zipcode.zipcode.should match(/\A[0-9]{4}[A-Z]{2}\z/)
To use it to actually validate this format inside your model, use this:
validates :zipcode, format: /\A[0-9]{4}[A-Z]{2}\z/
I am looking for something similar to ToExpression that is available in Mathematica. I just want to convert a string to an expression, and evaluate the expression. As a first pass, my strings will include only numbers and arithmetic operators, and not even parentheses.
If I need to write it, please point me in the direction of the appropriate pre-defined modules/definitions which I should use.
Maybe you can use this parser for infix expressions.
http://planet.racket-lang.org/package-source/soegaard/infix.plt/1/0/planet-docs/manual/index.html
Here is a small example (it takes a while for the library to install - it seems it old Schematics test suite takes forever to install these days - I need to switch to a builtin one).
#lang at-exp racket
(require (planet soegaard/infix)
(planet soegaard/infix/parser))
(display (format "1+2*3 is ~a\n" #${1+2*3} ))
(parse-expression #'here (open-input-string "1+2*3"))
The output will be:
1+2*3 is 7
.#<syntax:6:21 (#%infix (+ 1 (* 2 3)))>
The function parse-expression parses the expression in the string and
returns a syntax-object that resembles the output of ToExpression.
Does the section on dynamic evaluation apply to your question? You can parse strings into expressions by using a combination of read and open-input-string. The resulting expressions can be evaluated, with or without the help of a sandbox.
http://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/eval.html
Currnetly I am doing
words = []
words << "philip morris"
words << "Philip morris"
words << "philip Morris"
words << "Philip Morris"
for word in words
doc.search("[text()*='#{word}']")
end
When I was using hpricot I found where to downcase the results within the gem so I could just keep all my searchs lowercase, however nokogiri has been quite difficult to find where one could even do that. Is anyone aware of a way to do this?
Thank you very much for your time
The lower-case XPath function is not available but you can use the translate XPath 1.0 function to convert your text to lowercase e.g. for the English alphabet:
translate(text(),'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ','abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz')
I couldn't seem to use this in combination with the *= operator but you can use contains to do a substring search instead, making the full thing:
doc.search("//*[contains(translate(text(),'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ','abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'),'philip morris')]")
I have an ActiveRecord model, Foo, which has a name field. I'd like users to be able to search by name, but I'd like the search to ignore case and any accents. Thus, I'm also storing a canonical_name field against which to search:
class Foo
validates_presence_of :name
before_validate :set_canonical_name
private
def set_canonical_name
self.canonical_name ||= canonicalize(self.name) if self.name
end
def canonicalize(x)
x.downcase. # something here
end
end
I need to fill in the "something here" to replace the accented characters. Is there anything better than
x.downcase.gsub(/[àáâãäå]/,'a').gsub(/æ/,'ae').gsub(/ç/, 'c').gsub(/[èéêë]/,'e')....
And, for that matter, since I'm not on Ruby 1.9, I can't put those Unicode literals in my code. The actual regular expressions will look much uglier.
ActiveSupport::Inflector.transliterate (requires Rails 2.2.1+ and Ruby 1.9 or 1.8.7)
example:
>> ActiveSupport::Inflector.transliterate("àáâãäå").to_s
=> "aaaaaa"
Rails has already a builtin for normalizing, you just have to use this to normalize your string to form KD and then remove the other chars (i.e. accent marks) like this:
>> "àáâãäå".mb_chars.normalize(:kd).gsub(/[^\x00-\x7F]/n,'').downcase.to_s
=> "aaaaaa"
Better yet is to use I18n:
1.9.3-p392 :001 > require "i18n"
=> false
1.9.3-p392 :002 > I18n.transliterate("Olá Mundo!")
=> "Ola Mundo!"
I have tried a lot of this approaches but they were not achieving one or several of these requirements:
Respect spaces
Respect 'ñ' character
Respect case (I know is not a requirement for the original question but is not difficult to move an string to lowcase)
Has been this:
# coding: utf-8
string.tr(
"ÀÁÂÃÄÅàáâãäåĀāĂ㥹ÇçĆćĈĉĊċČčÐðĎďĐđÈÉÊËèéêëĒēĔĕĖėĘęĚěĜĝĞğĠġĢģĤĥĦħÌÍÎÏìíîïĨĩĪīĬĭĮįİıĴĵĶķĸĹĺĻļĽľĿŀŁłÑñŃńŅņŇňʼnŊŋÒÓÔÕÖØòóôõöøŌōŎŏŐőŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšſŢţŤťŦŧÙÚÛÜùúûüŨũŪūŬŭŮůŰűŲųŴŵÝýÿŶŷŸŹźŻżŽž",
"AAAAAAaaaaaaAaAaAaCcCcCcCcCcDdDdDdEEEEeeeeEeEeEeEeEeGgGgGgGgHhHhIIIIiiiiIiIiIiIiIiJjKkkLlLlLlLlLlNnNnNnNnnNnOOOOOOooooooOoOoOoRrRrRrSsSsSsSssTtTtTtUUUUuuuuUuUuUuUuUuUuWwYyyYyYZzZzZz"
)
– http://blog.slashpoundbang.com/post/12938588984/remove-all-accents-and-diacritics-from-string-in-ruby
You have to modify a little bit the character list to respect 'ñ' character but is an easy job.
My answer: the String#parameterize method:
"Le cœur de la crémiére".parameterize
=> "le-coeur-de-la-cremiere"
For non-Rails programs:
Install activesupport: gem install activesupport then:
require 'active_support/inflector'
"a&]'s--3\014\xC2àáâã3D".parameterize
# => "a-s-3-3d"
Decompose the string and remove non-spacing marks from it.
irb -ractive_support/all
> "àáâãäå".mb_chars.normalize(:kd).gsub(/\p{Mn}/, '')
aaaaaa
You may also need this if used in a .rb file.
# coding: utf-8
the normalize(:kd) part here splits out diacriticals where possible (ex: the "n with tilda" single character is split into an n followed by a combining diacritical tilda character), and the gsub part then removes all the diacritical characters.
I think that you maybe don't really what to go down that path. If you are developing for a market that has these kind of letters your users probably will think you are a sort of ...pip.
Because 'å' isn't even close to 'a' in any meaning to a user.
Take a different road and read up about searching in a non-ascii way. This is just one of those cases someone invented unicode and collation.
A very late PS:
http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Case_folding
http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod-norm/#sec-WhyNormalization
Besides that I have no ide way the link to collation go to a msdn page but I leave it there. It should have been http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/
This assumes you use Rails.
"anything".parameterize.underscore.humanize.downcase
Given your requirements, this is probably what I'd do... I think it's neat, simple and will stay up to date in future versions of Rails and Ruby.
Update: dgilperez pointed out that parameterize takes a separator argument, so "anything".parameterize(" ") (deprecated) or "anything".parameterize(separator: " ") is shorter and cleaner.
Convert the text to normalization form D, remove all codepoints with unicode category non spacing mark (Mn), and convert it back to normalization form C. This will strip all diacritics, and your problem is reduced to a case insensitive search.
See http://www.siao2.com/2005/02/19/376617.aspx and http://www.siao2.com/2007/05/14/2629747.aspx for details.
The key is to use two columns in your database: canonical_text and original_text. Use original_text for display and canonical_text for searches. That way, if a user searches for "Visual Cafe," she sees the "Visual Café" result. If she really wants a different item called "Visual Cafe," it can be saved separately.
To get the canonical_text characters in a Ruby 1.8 source file, do something like this:
register_replacement([0x008A].pack('U'), 'S')
You probably want Unicode decomposition ("NFD"). After decomposing the string, just filter out anything not in [A-Za-z]. æ will decompose to "ae", ã to "a~" (approximately - the diacritical will become a separate character) so the filtering leaves a reasonable approximation.
iconv:
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-talk-google/browse_frm/thread/8064dcac15d688ce?
=============
a perl module which i can't understand:
http://www.ahinea.com/en/tech/accented-translate.html
============
brute force (there's a lot of htose critters!:
http://projects.jkraemer.net/acts_as_ferret/wiki#UTF-8support
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/2384
I had problems getting the foo.mb_chars.normalize(:kd).gsub(/[^\x00-\x7F]/n,'').downcase.to_s solution to work. I'm not using Rails and there was some conflict with my activesupport/ruby versions that I couldn't get to the bottom of.
Using the ruby-unf gem seems to be a good substitute:
require 'unf'
foo.to_nfd.gsub(/[^\x00-\x7F]/n,'').downcase
As far as I can tell this does the same thing as .mb_chars.normalize(:kd). Is this correct? Thanks!
If you are using PostgreSQL => 9.4 as your DB adapter, maybe you could add in a migration it's "unaccent" extension that I think does what you want, like this:
def self.up
enable_extension "unaccent" # No falla si ya existe
end
In order to test, in the console:
2.3.1 :045 > ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("SELECT unaccent('unaccent', 'àáâãäåÁÄ')").first
=> {"unaccent"=>"aaaaaaAA"}
Notice there is case sensitive up to now.
Then, maybe use it in a scope, like:
scope :with_canonical_name, -> (name) {
where("unaccent(foos.name) iLIKE unaccent('#{name}')")
}
The iLIKE operator makes the search case insensitive. There is another approach, using citext data type. Here is a discussion about this two approaches. Notice also that use of PosgreSQL's lower() function is not recommended.
This will save you some DB space, since you will no longer require the cannonical_name field, and perhaps make your model simpler, at the cost of some extra processing in each query, in an amount depending of whether you are using iLIKE or citext, and your dataset.
If you are using MySQL maybe you can use this simple solution, but I have not tested it.
lol.. i just tryed this.. and it is working.. iam still not pretty sure why.. but when i use this 4 lines of code:
str = str.gsub(/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/,"")
str = str.gsub(/[ ]+/," ")
str = str.gsub(/ /,"-")
str = str.downcase
it automaticly removes any accent from filenames.. which i was trying to remove(accent from filenames and renaming them than) hope it helped :)