Here’s a nice trick I like to use to quickly transform some random piece of text using Ruby and Textmate:
string = DATA.read
# do stuff here...
__END__
Text to transform goes here
By using the __END__ line you tell Ruby to not executre all that follows, but capture it in an IO which you can read. You can then quickly whip up a script and have Textmate run it using ⌘R. The script’s output can then be copied and pasted.
I use this all the time to transform plain text into HTML, crunch some numbers or filter some text. Think of it as a ‘filter through command’ (⌥⌘R) on steroids.
Here’s a quick example to convert ugly plain-text fractions in an HTML page to pretty entities:
input = DATA.read
{
'1/2' => '½',
'1/2' => '¼',
'3/2' => '¾'
}.each_pair do |plain_text, html_entity|
input.gsub!(/\b#{plain_text}\b/, html_entity)
end
puts input
__END__
1/2 an egg and 1/2 pint of milk
