Split string by multiple delimiters

Question

I want to split a string by whitespaces, , and \' using a single ruby command.

1. word.split will split by white spaces

Answer 1

You can use a combination of the split method and the Regexp.union method like so:

delimiters = [',', ' ', "'"]
word.split(Regexp.union(delimiters))
# => ["Now", "is", "the", "time", "for", "all", "good", "people"]

You can even use regex patters in the delimiters.

delimiters = [',', /\s/, "'"]
word.split(Regexp.union(delimiters))
# => ["Now", "is", "the", "time", "for", "all", "good", "people"]

This solution has the advantage of allowing totally dynamic delimiters or any length.