How do I convert a comma-separated string into an array?

Question

Is there any way to convert a comma separated string into an array in Ruby? For instance, if I had a string like this:

"one,two,three,four"

How would I convert it into an array like this?

["one", "two", "three", "four"]

Answer 1

Use the split method to do it:

"one,two,three,four".split(',')
# ["one","two","three","four"]

If you want to ignore leading / trailing whitespace use:

"one , two , three , four".split(/\s*,\s*/)
# ["one", "two", "three", "four"]

If you want to parse multiple lines (ie a CSV file) into separate arrays:

require "csv"
CSV.parse("one,two\nthree,four")
# [["one","two"],["three","four"]]

Answer 2

require 'csv'
CSV.parse_line('one,two,three,four') #=> ["one", "two", "three", "four"]

Answer 3

>> "one,two,three,four".split ","
=> ["one", "two", "three", "four"]

Answer 4

If your string has an unknown number of whitespaces before/after in any order/number, then you can also do the following:

'  one  ,   two,three, four   '.split(',').map { | item | item.strip }

#=> ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']

Wrote a blog post for those who're interested.