How do you delete one apostrophe where it is duplicated in a string?

Question

In ruby, say I have this string: "abc''xyz''"

(those are 2 single quotes after abc and xyz)

Now, I am trying to find a way to make it into this string: "abc'xyz'"

I want to delete only one apostrophe from this string in locations where there are two apostrophes back to back. Thanks in advance.

What you tried before asking? – Alex Holubenko Jun 12 '17 at 18:47 — Alex Holubenko, Jun 12 '17 at 18:47

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 12 '17 at 18:48

4

You can use String#squeeze:

"abc''xyz''".squeeze("'")
#=> "abc'xyz'"

This method removes duplicates of a certain character if they are immediately after each other. It will reduce n characters in a row to just one.

For example, if you had the string " '''''' ", squeezing it would return the following:

" '''''' ".squeeze("'")
#=> " ' "

answered Jun 12 '17 at 18:48

Piccolo

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That's very handy. – Sebastian Palma Jun 12 '17 at 19:34
Hi @athill16 if this or any answer has solved your question please consider [accepting it](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234/179419) by clicking the check-mark. This indicates to the wider community that you've found a solution and gives some reputation to both the answerer and yourself. There is no obligation to do this. – Piccolo Jun 12 '17 at 19:57

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 12 '17 at 19:19

String#squeeze is what you need and gsub is really a bad idea.

Benchmark.bm do |bm|

  bm.report("squeeze") do
    iterations.times do
      "e''eee''e'e''''e".squeeze("'")
    end
  end

  bm.report("gsub") do
    iterations.times do
      "e''eee''e'e''''e".gsub(/\'+/, "'")
    end
  end
end

And results:

        user       system     total     real
squeeze 6.109000   0.000000   6.109000  (  6.110040)
gsub    22.454000  0.000000   22.454000 ( 22.469204)

How do you delete one apostrophe where it is duplicated in a string?

2 Answers2