limit-split.md

Limit Split

I've only ever used Ruby's String#split with the delimiter argument (e.g. "this string has spaces".split(" ")). However, this method has another argument you can specify; the limit argument. With limit, you can limit the number of times that the split happens.

"this string has many spaces".split(" ")
# => ["this", "string", "has", "many", "spaces"]
"this string has many spaces".split(" ", 3)
# => ["this", "string", "has many spaces"]

There are surely many use cases, but one that stands out (from The Rails 4 Way) is for splitting a name into first and last names.

"Josh Branchaud".split(" ", 2)
# => ["Josh", "Branchaud"]
"David Heinemeier Hansson".split(" ", 2)
# => ["David", "Heinemeier Hansson"]

This really simplifies the code that is needed to make the following example work:

def create_user(name)
  user = User.new
  user.first_name, user.last_name = name.split(" ", 2)
  user.save
end