In Ruby, how to read data column wise from a CSV file?

Question

I know how it is done row-wise

CSV.foreach(filename.csv) do |row|
  puts "#{row}"
end

But I am completely lost column wise?

Answer 1

test.csv:

name,surname,no1,no2,no3,date
Raja,Palit,77489,24,84,12/12/2011
Mathew,bargur,77559,25,88,01/12/2011
harin,Roy,77787,24,80,12/12/2012
Soumi,paul,77251,24,88,11/11/2012

Acces by cols:

require 'csv'
csv = CSV.read('test.csv', :headers=>true)
p csv['name'] #=>["Raja", "Mathew", "harin", "Soumi"]

#or even:
t = CSV.table('test.csv')
p t[:no1] #=> [77489, 77559, 77787, 77251]

Note that in the last case the cols are accessed by their symbolized name and that strings are converted to numbers when possible.