Please explain this code from watchr - ruby-on-rails

I'm learning to use watchr, a ruby gem that watches files and runs something if they change
watch( 'test/test_.*\.rb' ) {|md| system("ruby #{md[0]}") }
watch( 'lib/(.*)\.rb' ) {|md| system("ruby test/test_#{md[1]}.rb") }
Specifically, I don't understand what md[0] and md[1] are. I know that 'test/tests_.*\.rb' is a regular expression and it's retrieving a list of files. I also know that |md| represents filenames that match the regular expression. But I'm not sure what md[0] and md[1] would point to

I suspect that md is a MatchData instance, where [0] it the entire matched text and [1] is the first captured sub-expression), in this case the filename inside the lib directory, without the extension.

Ruby's regular expression operator (=~) returns an object that responds to :[]. The values 0 and 1 refer to the matched string and the first group (the part in the parentheses).
So for example if the strings being tested were:
"test/test_sample.rb"
"lib/sample.rb"
Then the first expression (/test/test_.*.rb/) would match "test/test_sample.rb", and the second expression (/lib/(.*).rb/) would match "sample". You can see this in the console:
> /test\/test_.*\.rb/ =~ "test/test_sample.rb"
# => 0
> $~[0]
# => "test/test_sample.rb"
> /lib\/(.*)\.rb/ =~ "lib/sample.rb"
# => 0
> $~[0]
# => "lib/sample.rb"
> $~[1]
# => "sample"
md stands for MatchData, which is the class of the object Ruby uses to return the result of the regex match.

zetetic's answer is correct; md is an instance of Rudy's MatchData class, which is the result of applying the regular expression on the modified file (see String#match).
The relevant line from the Watchr source code is at: https://github.com/mynyml/watchr/blob/17fa9bf80998483f9cf69a934bbcb726a0c389fa/lib/watchr/script.rb#L204

Related

Heisenbug with Julia's parse?

On today's Advent of Code I needed to parse strings into integers. The function I wrote for that was
function fd(s::String, fromto::UnitRange)::Bool
try
parse(UInt, s) in fromto
catch ArgumentError
false
end
end
That function was called several times within an isvalid which was called for all inputs to count the number of valid things.
The result was always 0 and the respective tests kept failing. Then I extracted one of the failing test things and debugged into isvalid, it passed!
I rearraged a few things and tested more, the same thing kept happening:
Running the code regularly, fd never returned true.
When stepping through, I got true where expected.
After replacing the parse to
function fd(s::String, fromto::UnitRange)::Bool
parsed = tryparse(UInt, s)
if isnothing(parsed)
false
else
parsed in fromto
end
end
it immediately worked always and the exercise was solved.
Shouldn't these two versions of the function always return the same result? What happened here?
Update1
This was the example that I used:
println("Sample is ", isvalid(Dict(
"hcl" => "#623a2f", # check with regex
"ecl" => "grn", # checked with set
"pid" => "087499704", # check with regex
"hgt" => "74in", # check with regex
"iyr" => "2012", # this was parsed
"eyr" => "2030", # this was parsed
"byr" => "1980", # this was parsed
)))
Update 2
This post only has a subset of the code. If you want to try yourself, you can get the full file at GitHub. I also recorded a video showing the differing behavior with and without debugging.
The thing is demonstrated quite clearly with #assert fd("2010", 2000:2020) == fdt("2010", 2000:2020) failing in one scenario and not in the other.

How to output JSON in Rails without escaping back slashes

I need to output some JSON for a customer in a somewhat unusual format. My app is written with Rails 5.
Desired JSON:
{
"key": "\/Date(0000000000000)\/"
}
The timestamp value needs to have a \/ at both the start and end of the string. As far as I can tell, this seems to be a format commonly used in .NET services. I'm stuck trying to get the slashes to output correctly.
I reduced the problem to a vanilla Rails 5 application with a single controller action. All the permutations of escapes I can think of have failed so far.
def index
render json: {
a: '\/Date(0000000000000)\/',
b: "\/Date(0000000000000)\/",
c: '\\/Date(0000000000000)\\/',
d: "\\/Date(0000000000000)\\/"
}
end
Which outputs the following:
{
"a": "\\/Date(0000000000000)\\/",
"b": "/Date(0000000000000)/",
"c": "\\/Date(0000000000000)\\/",
"d": "\\/Date(0000000000000)\\/"
}
For the sake of discussion, assume that the format cannot be changed since it is controlled by a third party.
I have uploaded a test app to Github to demonstrate the problem. https://github.com/gregawoods/test_app_ignore_me
After some brainstorming with coworkers (thanks #TheZanke), we came upon a solution that works with the native Rails JSON output.
WARNING: This code overrides some core behavior in ActiveSupport. Use at your own risk, and apply judicious unit testing!
We tracked this down to the JSON encoding in ActiveSupport. All strings eventually are encoded via the ActiveSupport::JSON.encode. We needed to find a way to short circuit that logic and simply return the unencoded string.
First we extended the EscapedString#to_json method found here.
module EscapedStringExtension
def to_json(*)
if starts_with?('noencode:')
"\"#{self}\"".gsub('noencode:', '')
else
super
end
end
end
module ActiveSupport::JSON::Encoding
class JSONGemEncoder
class EscapedString
prepend EscapedStringExtension
end
end
end
Then in the controller we add a noencode: flag to the json hash. This tells our version of to_json not to do any additional encoding.
def index
render json: {
a: '\/Date(0000000000000)\/',
b: 'noencode:\/Date(0000000000000)\/',
}
end
The rendered output shows that b gives us what we want, while a preserves the standard behavior.
$ curl http://localhost:3000/sales/index.json
{"a":"\\/Date(0000000000000)\\/","b":"\/Date(0000000000000)\/"}
Meditate on this:
Ruby treats forward-slashes the same in double-quoted and single-quoted strings.
"/" # => "/"
'/' # => "/"
In a double-quoted string "\/" means \ is escaping the following character. Because / doesn't have an escaped equivalent it results in a single forward-slash:
"\/" # => "/"
In a single-quoted string in all cases but one it means there's a back-slash followed by the literal value of the character. That single case is when you want to represent a backslash itself:
'\/' # => "\\/"
"\\/" # => "\\/"
'\\/' # => "\\/"
Learning this is one of the most confusing parts about dealing with strings in languages, and this isn't restricted to Ruby, it's something from the early days of programming.
Knowing the above:
require 'json'
puts JSON[{ "key": "\/value\/" }]
puts JSON[{ "key": '/value/' }]
puts JSON[{ "key": '\/value\/' }]
# >> {"key":"/value/"}
# >> {"key":"/value/"}
# >> {"key":"\\/value\\/"}
you should be able to make more sense of what you're seeing in your results and in the JSON output above.
I think the rules for this were originally created for C, so "Escape sequences in C" might help.
Hi I think this is the simplest way
.gsub("/",'//').gsub('\/','')
for input {:key=>"\\/Date(0000000000000)\\/"} (printed)
first gsub will do{"key":"\\//Date(0000000000000)\\//"}
second will get you
{"key":"\/Date(0000000000000)\/"}
as you needed

Regex in Ruby: expression not found

I'm having trouble with a regex in Ruby (on Rails). I'm relatively new to this.
The test string is:
http://www.xyz.com/017010830343?$ProdLarge$
I am trying to remove "$ProdLarge$". In other words, the $ signs and anything between.
My regular expression is:
\$\w+\$
Rubular says my expression is ok. http://rubular.com/r/NDDQxKVraK
But when I run my code, the app says it isn't finding a match. Code below:
some_array.each do |x|
logger.debug "scan #{x.scan('\$\w+\$')}"
logger.debug "String? #{x.instance_of?(String)}"
x.gsub!('\$\w+\$','scl=1')
...
My logger debug line shows a result of "[]". String is confirmed as being true. And the gsub line has no effect.
What do I need to correct?
Use /regex/ instead of 'regex':
> "http://www.xyz.com/017010830343?$ProdLarge$".gsub(/\$\w+\$/, 'scl=1')
=> "http://www.xyz.com/017010830343?scl=1"
Don't use a regex for this task, use a tool designed for it, URI. To remove the query:
require 'uri'
url = URI.parse('http://www.xyz.com/017010830343?$ProdLarge$')
url.query = nil
puts url.to_s
=> http://www.xyz.com/017010830343
To change to a different query use this instead of url.query = nil:
url.query = 'scl=1'
puts url.to_s
=> http://www.xyz.com/017010830343?scl=1
URI will automatically encode values if necessary, saving you the trouble. If you need even more URL management power, look at Addressable::URI.

Ignoring case for part of regular expression

Is there an easy way to ignore case for part of a regular expression? I'm using Ruby 1.9.3 and Rails 3.2.8 (not sure if Rails helps at all, but thought I'd mention it).
For example, I want to check if a string is "Hello, my name is Bartholomew", but I only care that Bartholomew has proper capitalization. I could do:
/^[Hh][Ee][Ll][Ll][Oo], [Mm][Yy] [Nn][Aa][Mm][Ee] [Ii][Ss] Bartholomew$/
But that's such a pain. I know that I can ignore case for the whole string with /i at the end:
/^hello, my name is bartholomew$/i
But I can't split the string (the regular expression and the string itself are both entered by users).
Here's one way to do it, by making the regex case-sensitive by default and marking the insensitive section:
> pattern = /(?i:hello, my name is) Bartholomew/
=> /(?i:hello, my name is) Bartholomew/
> pattern =~ 'Hello, my Name is Bartholomew'
=> 0
> pattern =~ 'Hello, my Name is bartholomew'
=> nil
The other way to do it is to make the regex case-insensitive by default, and marking the sensitive section:
> pattern = /hello, my name is (?-i:Bartholomew)/i
=> /hello, my name is (?-i:Bartholomew)/i
> pattern =~ 'Hello, my Name is Bartholomew'
=> 0
> pattern =~ 'Hello, my Name is bartholomew'
=> nil

How to parse a yaml file into ruby hashs and/or arrays?

I need to load a yaml file into Hash,
What should I do?
I would use something like:
hash = YAML.load(File.read("file_path"))
A simpler version of venables' answer:
hash = YAML.load_file("file_path")
Use the YAML module:
http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.9.3/libdoc/yaml/rdoc/YAML.html
node = YAML::parse( <<EOY )
one: 1
two: 2
EOY
puts node.type_id
# prints: 'map'
p node.value['one']
# prints key and value nodes:
# [ #<YAML::YamlNode:0x8220278 #type_id="str", #value="one", #kind="scalar">,
# #<YAML::YamlNode:0x821fcd8 #type_id="int", #value="1", #kind="scalar"> ]'
# Mappings can also be accessed for just the value by accessing as a Hash directly
p node['one']
# prints: #<YAML::YamlNode:0x821fcd8 #type_id="int", #value="1", #kind="scalar">
http://yaml4r.sourceforge.net/doc/page/parsing_yaml_documents.htm
You may run into a problem mentioned at this related question, namely, that the YAML file or stream specifies an object into which the YAML loader will attempt to convert the data into. The problem is that you will need a related Gem that knows about the object in question.
My solution was quite trivial and is provided as an answer to that question. Do this:
yamltext = File.read("somefile","r")
yamltext.sub!(/^--- \!.*$/,'---')
hash = YAML.load(yamltext)
In essence, you strip the object-classifier text from the yaml-text. Then you parse/load it.

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