This is what I have now – which looks too verbose for the work it is doing.
@title = tokens[Title].strip! || tokens[Title] if !tokens[Title].nil?
Assume tokens is a array obtained by splitting a CSV line.
now the functions like strip! chomp! et. all return nil if the string was not modified
"abc".strip! # => nil
" abc ".strip! # => "abc"
What is the Ruby way to say trim it if it contains extra leading or trailing spaces without creating copies?
Gets uglier if I want to do tokens[Title].chomp!.strip!