What is the difference between #split and #chars in Ruby when splitting a string?
"Hello, World".split("")
#=> ["H", "e", "l", "l", "o", ",", " ", "W", "o", "r", "l", "d"]
"Hello, World".chars
#=> ["H", "e", "l", "l", "o", ",", " ", "W", "o", "r", "l", "d"]
They both return an array, and they both include the blank space and punctuation.
Is there a scenario where one is preferable?
What is the difference between
splitandchars[...]?
string.chars parses the underlying bytes to returns the string's characters, whereas string.split('') uses a regular expression to achieve the same.
As a result, chars is faster and more robust. It even works if the string contains invalid characters:
"foo\x80bar".chars
#=> ["f", "o", "o", "\x80", "b", "a", "r"]
Whereas split fails if the string is malformed (because the regex engine can't handle it):
"foo\x80bar".split('')
#=> ArgumentError: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8
If I'm not mistaken, split('') is equivalent to split(//).
Is there a scenario where one is preferable?
split('') can be found in many tutorials. I assume this is because prior to Ruby 2.x, chars returned an enumerator. So in order to get an array you had to use two method calls:
string.chars.to_a
or a single call to: (which is also slightly shorter)
string.split('')
Nowadays, you'd use chars (or each_char for the pre-2.x behavior)
You can use split for dividing strings into substrings based on a delimiter
For example:
"a/b-c".split('/') will return ["a", "b-c"]
chars instead returns an array of characters in string
"a/b-c".chars will return ["a", "/", "b", "-", "c"]
In conclusion, there are plenty of scenarios where one is more suitable than the other one.