XML parsing, block name with minus

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi!

I'm trying to parse a XML document (MusicXML), I found that here something about it: Parsing XML with Ruby // RailsTips by John Nunemaker - I chose Hpricot, but I have a problem: in XML document, which I'm trying to parse, there are names of blocks with minus sign, for example <score-partwise>. In Hpricot it should looks something like this:

xml = File.read(path)     puts Benchmark.measure {       doc = Hpricot::XML(xml)       (doc/:score-partwise).each do |s|         # here we have s as each score-partwise block       end     }

But it throws undefined local variable or method `partwise' for #<MusicxmlController:0xb6badff4>, becouse in symbols names minus sign is prohibited. How can I make a symbol name with minus sign?

cheers, simon

2

Just use a string instead:

(doc/‘score-partwise’)

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

3

Szymon Przybył wrote: [...]

But it throws undefined local variable or method `partwise' for #<MusicxmlController:0xb6badff4>, becouse in symbols names minus sign is prohibited. How can I make a symbol name with minus sign?

Well, you can actually have any characters you like in a symbol name. The :name syntax only works if the symbol name doesn't contain "weird" characters, but the following syntaxes will work regardless:

:'name-with-weird-characters' :"name-with-weird-characters-and-#{variable_interpolation}"

...or just use String#to_sym .

We are now well out of Rails territory and into basic Ruby, so further discussion probably should go to the main Ruby list.

cheers, simon

Best,