The .split method

What is a .split method?
The .split method is a string method that is used to split a string into an array of substrings based on a specified delimiter. By default, the delimiter is a space, but you can provide any character or regular expression pattern to determine where the string should be split.

Example:

# Using .split to split a string into an array of words
sentence = "This is a sample sentence"
words = sentence.split

puts words
# Output: ["This", "is", "a", "sample", "sentence"]

You can also provide a custom delimiter as an argument to .split. For example, using a comma as the delimiter:

# Using .split with a custom delimiter (comma)
csv_data = "John,Doe,30"
fields = csv_data.split(',')

puts fields
# Output: ["John", "Doe", "30"]

How and when to use the .split method?
The .split method is particularly useful when working with text data and you need to extract individual components from a delimited string. Here are some common use cases:

1) Parsing CSV (Comma-Separated Values) Data:

csv_line = "Alice,25,New York"
user_data = csv_line.split(',')

2) Extracting Paths or File Names:

file_path = "/path/to/my/file.txt"
parts = file_path.split('/')

3) Handling Input with Multiple Values:

user_input = gets.chomp
values = user_input.split(',')

4) Tokenizing Text:

text = "Tokenizing this text into individual words"
tokens = text.split(' ')