hi
I have a string:
my_string=“blablablablasubstringblabla”
I need to extract the sentence beetween “” and “</
coordinates>”
How can I do that?
Thanks for your help
JF
my_string=“blablablablasubstringblabla”
#the parentheses below define the actual match for the overall regex
pattern
sub_string = /.(.)</coordinates>.*/.match(my_string)
puts sub_string[0]
Regex is the fastest/most effective for one/off text parsing. Another
good option is Whytheluckystiff’s Hpricot:
http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/
Hank
On Sep 21, 2008, at 5:03 PM, blasterpal wrote:
Hank
You probably want the regexp to be:
/(.)</coordinates>/
so there’s less backtracking when the . first tries to gobble
everything.
You might also need something like:
/<coordinates\b[^>]>(.)</coordinates>/
If there can be any attributes on the coordinates tag. Of course, if
you really do have XML in my_string, a true parser like Hpricot or
REXML will be more reliable than regular expressions. For example, if
you had to match against:
“blahblahfirst one</
coordinates>yadayadayadaoops! another one</
coordinates>yakyakyak”
would you want the substring to be:
“first oneyadayadayadaoops! another one”
(yeah, I didn’t think so 
-Rob
On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 1:28 PM, jef [email protected] wrote:
hi
I have a string:
my_string=“blablablablasubstringblabla”I need to extract the sentence beetween “” and “</
coordinates>”How can I do that?
Hi, I would recommend using the Hpricot and you can find the
documentation
here:
http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/doc/hpricot
Good luck,
-Conrad
Regexp.match(string) will return you a MatchData object, which is not
just the match: It can be accessed as an Array. So:
sub[0] returns the entire matched string
sub[1], sub[2], … return the values of the matched back references
(the ones between parentheses).
sub[1] is therefore the thing you want to use. No need to use to_s.
ah ok
thank you all for your help
hi
/.(.)</coordinates>.*/ The reg exp you gave works
fine. I tested it with rubular
probleme I can retrieve the substring I always get the whole string.
Here is what i did:
irb(main):001:0> st="-0.954850,46.436960,0</
coordinates>"
=> “-0.954850,46.436960,0”
irb(main):002:0> sub=/.(.)</coordinates>./.match(st)
=> #MatchData:0x7f2040045fd0
irb(main):003:0> sub.inspect
=> “#MatchData:0x7f2040045fd0”
irb(main):004:0> sub.to_s
=> “-0.954850,46.436960,0”
irb(main):005:0> sub.string
=> “-0.954850,46.436960,0”
irb(main):006:0> st.match(/.(.)</coordinates>./)
=> #MatchData:0x7f2040019fc0
irb(main):007:0> st.match(/.(.)</coordinates>.*/).to_s
=> “-0.954850,46.436960,0”
thank you for your help
: