Extract the last word in sentence/string?

Question

I have an array of strings, of different lengths and contents.

Now i'm looking for an easy way to extract the last word from each string, without knowing how long that word is or how long the string is.

something like;

array.each{|string| puts string.fetch(" ", last)

Simon Woker · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-02T16:00:16.583

35

This should work just fine

"my random sentence".split.last # => "sentence"

to exclude punctuation, delete it

"my random sentence..,.!?".split.last.delete('.!?,') #=> "sentence"

To get the "last words" as an array from an array you collect

["random sentence...", "lorem ipsum!!!"].collect { |s| s.split.last.delete('.!?,') } # => ["sentence", "ipsum"]

edited Mar 02 '12 at 16:00

answered Mar 02 '12 at 13:42

Simon Woker

4,994
1
27
41

1

I would like to add that you can supply a separator to the split function. Default the function uses whitespaces, but you might want to split on something else, like slashes or dashes. Ref: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/String.html#method-i-split – Jeroen Bouman Jun 09 '16 at 05:47

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 02 '12 at 13:46

3

array_of_strings = ["test 1", "test 2", "test 3"]
array_of_strings.map{|str| str.split.last} #=> ["1","2","3"]

answered Mar 02 '12 at 13:46

megas

21,401
12
79
130

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 06 '18 at 13:37

The problem with all of these solutions is that you only considering spaces for word separation. Using regex you can capture any non-word character as a word separator. Here is what I use:

str = 'Non-space characters, like foo=bar.'
str.split(/\W/).last
# "bar"

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 02 '12 at 13:53

1

["one two", "three four five"].collect { |s| s.split.last }
=> ["two", "five"]

answered Mar 02 '12 at 13:53

OscarRyz

196,001
113
385
569

DGM · Answer 5 · 2012-03-02T14:09:31.147

1

"a string of words!".match(/(.*\s)*(.+)\Z/)[2] #=> 'words!' catches from the last whitespace on. That would include the punctuation.

To extract that from an array of strings, use it with collect:

["a string of words", "Something to say?", "Try me!"].collect {|s| s.match(/(.*\s)*(.+)\Z/)[2] } #=> ["words", "say?", "me!"]

edited Mar 02 '12 at 14:09

answered Mar 02 '12 at 14:02

DGM

26,629
7
58
79

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 02 '12 at 14:19

0

This is the simplest way I can think of.

hostname> irb
irb(main):001:0> str = 'This is a string.'
=> "This is a string."
irb(main):002:0> words = str.split(/\s+/).last
=> "string."
irb(main):003:0>

answered Mar 02 '12 at 14:19

Dylan Northrup

161
1
9

Extract the last word in sentence/string?

6 Answers6