16:19 jespanda: :/
16:19 jespanda: question
16:19 jespanda: if i am editing routes, i have /123-blah, but I just want /123, how do i get that?
16:21 wsong: k
16:21 ian: routes in what
16:21 ian: wsong: bye
16:21 ian: wait
16:21 ian: are you not saying goodbye
16:21 wsong: ?
16:21 wsong: oh
16:21 ian: I thought I was going to be super smart and call it before you said so
16:21 wsong: wrong window
16:21 jespanda: routes in ruby
16:21 ian: damnnnn
16:21 wsong: close call though
16:22 wsong: you wanna watch the game somewhere today, btw?
16:22 ian: matt is coming into town and we're supposed to hang out
16:22 ian: I dunno where or when
16:22 ian: still waiting to hear back
16:23 Asterism: oh fuck
16:23 Asterism: mali index patient came in on a bus
16:23 ian: mali index?
16:23 Asterism: bleeding the whole way, and misdiagnosed as typhoid
16:23 ian: oooo fuck
16:23 jAg: hahhahahahahahahahahahah.....fuck
16:24 Asterism: rip
16:24 Asterism: basically worst case scenario here
16:24 jespanda: mali index?
16:24 jespanda: anyone able to help with the route problem?
16:24 Asterism: patient zero
16:24 jespanda: news link
16:25 wsong: jespanda: are you just trying to change the string?
16:25 wsong: or do you mean in like rails or whatever
16:25 jespanda: yes
16:25 skimbrel: jespanda: ruby != rails
16:25 Asterism: it's worth noting that ebola's batting average against Americans being treated in American hospitals is south of 33%
16:25 jespanda: in ruby
16:25 Asterism: 0.33 I guess
16:25 wsong: oh
16:25 wsong: well, is the “-blah” part always the same length?
16:25 jespanda: no
16:25 wsong: you could just split on hyphens
16:25 jespanda: random srting
16:25 wsong: and just drop the last bit
16:25 Asterism: which leves to a bunch of reassuring/non-reassuring inferences
16:25 jespanda: random strings
16:25 skimbrel: what do you have, and what do you want
16:25 jespanda: i just want whatever digits are in the front
16:25 jespanda: i was trying to regex it
16:25 jAg: tropical diseases aren't nearly as effective against modern western medicine?!! COlor me shocked
16:25 jAg: "Forty-three people, including 10 health workers, who came into contact with her have been identified and isolated."
16:25 jespanda: but it spat out the id without the changes
16:25 skimbrel: /(\d+).+?/
16:25 Asterism: inference A) some of those weird ass experimental therapies actually work (not reassuring, since we're pretty much out)
16:26 skimbrel: then retrieve the first group
16:26 skimbrel: i forget how you get groups out of a match in rubby
16:26 Asterism: inference B) early contact tracing leading to early hospitalization significantly increases survival rate (kind of reassuring; these systems will be stressed in a major outbreak)
16:26 evan___ has joined (~Palaver@152.sub-70-208-91.myvzw.com)
16:26 Asterism: inference C) higher standards of pallative care significantly increases survival rate (pretty reassuring)
16:28 jespanda: to_s.gsub(/^\d*/, '')
16:28 jespanda: gsub(/^\d*/, '')
16:28 jespanda: is what i have
16:28 skimbrel: are you trying to do it in place?
16:28 jespanda: i would expect to at least remove part of the string
16:28 jespanda: i have 1234-abcd
16:28 wsong: i think you need square brackets
16:28 wsong: if you’re trying to do a character class
16:29 jespanda: when i did that, the entire string just disappears
16:30 wsong: how about
16:30 jespanda: hence my confusion
16:30 wsong: to_s.gsub(/[^0-9]/, ‘’)
16:30 wsong: i don’t know ruby, but i think gsub will match on a character-by-character basis
16:31 wsong: yeah
16:31 jespanda: nope, i still get the full string
16:31 evan___ has left IRC (Ping timeout: 255 seconds)
16:31 wsong: huh
16:31 wsong: i’m trying it out here:
16:31 wsong: http://repl.it/languages/Ruby
16:31 steggybot__: repl.it
16:32 wsong: and this does the right thing
16:32 wsong: "/123-blah".to_s.gsub(/[^\d]/, '')
16:32 wsong: that should be equivalent to this, btw
16:32 wsong: "/123-blah".gsub(/[^0-9]*/, '')
16:32 wsong: is that what you’re entering?
16:32 wsong: keep in mind that that’ll return the string you want
16:32 wsong: the original string will, i think, be unmodified
16:32 wsong: (ruby has immutable strings, right?)
16:32 jespanda: i start with /boo/:id
16:32 jespanda: i am feeding it into bar(:id)
16:33 jespanda: and i want bar to do the transformation for me
16:33 skimbrel: and which piece do you want out
16:33 wsong: well, do you want to actually modify the string
16:33 wsong: or do you want bar to return a string
16:33 wsong: if ruby’s anything like python, you can’t modify strings
16:34 wsong: anyways, i gotta go into a meeting, but good luck
16:34 jespanda: new_id = '%{id}'.to_s.gsub(/[^0-9]/, ‘’)
16:34 jespanda: is what i currently have
16:34 jespanda: where new_id is hopefully the sanitized version
16:34 skimbrel: can we describe the problem in english
16:35 skimbrel: and then construct the appropriate code
16:35 skimbrel: you have: a string of the form “123-abc-def”
16:35 skimbrel: and you want “123”?
16:35 skimbrel: or you want “-abc-def”
16:36 jespanda: i want 123
16:36 jespanda: i just want the numbers
16:36 whunt has left IRC (Ping timeout: 272 seconds)
16:37 skimbrel: ok
16:37 skimbrel: you need to use a group
16:38 jespanda: why is that?
16:38 skimbrel: because groups capture the things you match with them
16:38 skimbrel: and then you can extract that matched substring from the match object:
16:38 skimbrel: and you shouldn’t be using gsub
16:38 Asterism: what's wrong with /^(\d+)-\S+$/
16:38 skimbrel: instead of trying to delete things you don’t care about, match the thing you do want
16:39 skimbrel: yes, exactly that thing asterism just said
16:39 Asterism: and yeah, you want string#match
16:39 skimbrel: int_id = /(\d+).*/.match(id)[1]
16:39 skimbrel: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-2.1.3/Regexp.html#method-i-match
16:39 steggybot__: Class: Regexp (Ruby 2.1.3)
16:39 Asterism: that too
16:42 Asterism: alright
16:42 Asterism: that's it
16:42 Asterism: bill kirstol has gone off the deep end
16:42 Asterism: https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/524920942049648640
16:43 skimbrel: also jespanda you shouldn’t need to use “%{id}” if id is already a string
16:43 skimbrel: rofl, cheney-giuliani
16:44 whunt has joined (~whunt@216.2.42.42)
16:44 heidi has joined (~heidi@216.2.42.42)
16:45 jespanda: skimbrel, i am getting  this error now
16:45 jespanda: undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass
16:45 Asterism: jespanda: okay, just use this
16:45 Asterism: http://rubular.com/
16:45 steggybot__: Rubular: a Ruby regular expression editor and tester
16:46 skimbrel: if you got nil then it means your match didn't.
16:46 Asterism: for the record, skimbrel's code works fine in 1.9.3
16:46 skimbrel: what the fuck did they change in 2.0?
16:46 Asterism: um
16:47 Asterism: almost nothing
16:47 Asterism: so i'm going to say that it's the string's fault
16:47 skimbrel: oh heh
16:47 jAg: man, Asterism, i want whatever he's smoking