iterating over each character of a String in ruby 1.8.6 (each_char)

Question

I am new to ruby and currently trying to operate on each character separately from a base String in ruby. I am using ruby 1.8.6 and would like to do something like:

"ABCDEFG".each_char do |i|
  puts i
end

This produces a undefined method `each_char' error.

I was expecting to see a vertical output of:

A
B
C
D
..etc

Is the each_char method defined only for 1.9? I tried using the plain each method, but the block simply ouputs the entire string in one line. The only way I figure how to do this, which is rather inconvenient is to create an array of characters from the begining:

['A','B','C','D','...'].each do|i|
  puts i
end

This outputs the desired:

A
B
C
..etc

Is there perhaps a way to achive this output using an unmodified string to begin with?

I think the Java equivalent is:

for (int i = 0; i < aString.length(); i++){
  char currentChar = aString.charAt(i);
  System.out.println(currentChar);
}

Answer 1

I have the same problem. I usually resort to String#split :

"ABCDEFG".split("").each do |i|
  puts i
end

I guess you could also implement it yourself like this:

class String
  def each_char
    self.split("").each { |i| yield i }
  end
end

Edit: yet another alternative is String#each_byte , available in Ruby 1.8.6, which returns the ASCII value of each char in an ASCII string:

"ABCDEFG".each_byte do |i|
  puts i.chr # Fixnum#chr converts any number to the ASCII char it represents
end

Answer 2

Extending la_f0ka's comment, esp. if you also need the index position in your code, you should be able to do

s = 'ABCDEFG'
for pos in 0...s.length
    puts s[pos].chr
end

The .chr is important as Ruby < 1.9 returns the code of the character at that position instead of a substring of one character at that position .

Answer 3

"ABCDEFG".chars.each do |char|
  puts char
end

also

"ABCDEFG".each_char {|char| p char}

Ruby version >2.5.1

Answer 4

there is really a problem in 1.8.6. and it's ok after this edition

in 1.8.6,you can add this:

requre 'jcode'

Answer 5

But now you can do much more:

a = "cruel world"

a.scan(/\w+/)        #=> ["cruel", "world"]

a.scan(/.../)        #=> ["cru", "el ", "wor"]

a.scan(/(...)/)      #=> [["cru"], ["el "], ["wor"]]

a.scan(/(..)(..)/)   #=> [["cr", "ue"], ["l ", "wo"]]

Answer 6

Returns an array of characters in str. This is a shorthand for str.each_char.to_a. If a block is given, which is a deprecated form, works the same as each_char.

from ruby-doc.org

also now you can do string.chars