# Re: add to words syntaxes

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-add-to-words-syntaxes/82500>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 16, 2006, 9:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-add-to-words-syntaxes/82500 "2006-03-16T09:34:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 9:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-add-to-words-syntaxes/82500/1 "2006-03-16T09:34:53Z")

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Actually, you may have problems with the tab searching,  
because these get converted to several blanks in a row  
when read by IO.readlines -  
but that can be corrected by letting a column separator  
be at least n blanks wide and searching for that -  
say, for at least 5 blanks as a separator -

if x=~/ {5,}/  
# first alternative  
else  
# second alternative  
end

Sorry for the confusion…

Best regards

Axel