String into comma-separated characters

1

Can you think of a way to turn a string into comma-separated characters, ideally as an array? as in:

"yes" ----> [y, e, s]
"vanilla" ----> [v, a, n, i, l, l, a]

thanks!

2 
"yes".as(Array)

Btw arrays aren’t comma-separated. They print with comma separation but they aren’t stored that way.

But… what do you need to do with this array that you can’t do with a string? You can already do, collect, at, put etc directly on strings. So I’d suggest to try it on the string first. You might find out that .as(Array) only wastes time.

hjh

3

I want to split up strings, often numbers, into individual figures
12345 >>> [1,2,3,4,5]

i always assumed arrays were actually comma-separated. i’ve been living in a lie :slight_smile:
thanks!

4 
a = "abc";
-> abc

a.do { |char| char.postln };
a  // separated and looped over
b
c
-> abc

a.collect { |char| (char.ascii + 4).asAscii };
-> efg  // each char operated on, and the result reassembled

a.at(1);
-> b

a[2];
-> c  // both 'at' syntaxes work transparently

// string literals are immutable
a.put(1, $x);
ERROR: Primitive '_BasicPut' failed.
Attempted write to immutable object.

// but copy it, or do any other non-in-place operation on it,
// and it's no longer immutable
b = a.copy;
-> abc

b.put(1, $x);
-> axc

So, for instance,

"12345".do { |char|
	var digitValue = char.digit;
	... do something with the digit...
}

// this fails because it tries to 'collect' a new String
// and Strings may contain only characters
"12345".collect { |char|
	char.digit
};

// but you can force a different collection type
b = "12345".collectAs({ |char|
	char.digit
}, Array);
-> [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ]

The last bit might be useful to you because it converts from a collection of ASCII characters into a collection of actual numbers. That is, the important thing about it is not that the result is displayed with commas – the important thing is that "12345".at(0) is $1 (a Char) while, after running those three lines, b.at(0) is 1 (an Integer).

Storage format is for the computer’s convenience. Display format is for human convenience. There are many, many cases where it’s good for these to be different.

hjh

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