Stumped: How do I iterate over regular expression matches?

Ruby
1

I looked for an iterator, and there may be something, but I don’t
recognize it.
I also tried:
while (x =~ /something/ )
p $1

end
and it just printed out the same match over and over. Perl does this
very
nicely, but google and pickaxe are not helping me do it in Ruby. Sorry
if this
is obvious.

xc

2

On Apr 26, 2006, at 1:21 PM, Xeno C. wrote:

Sorry if this
is obvious.

You are looking for String#scan. Hope that helps.

James Edward G. II

3

On 4/26/06, Xeno C. [email protected] wrote:

I looked for an iterator, and there may be something, but I don’t recognize it.

Have you looked at String#scan?

irb(main):001:0> s=‘abc blah blah abc something else abc’
=> “abc blah blah abc something else abc”
irb(main):002:0> s.scan(/abc/)
=> [“abc”, “abc”, “abc”]

Ryan

4

You can use String#scan:

irb
irb(main):001:0> a=“This is a test of this thing for this guy on the
net.”
=> “This is a test of this thing for this guy on the net.”
irb(main):002:0> a.scan(/is/)
=> [“is”, “is”, “is”, “is”]
irb(main):003:0> a.scan(/[^ ]is/)
=> [“his”, “his”, “his”]
irb(main):004:0> a.scan(/[^ ]+is/)
=> [“This”, “this”, “this”]
irb(main):005:0>

or:

a.scan(/[^ ]+is/) { |match|
puts “#{match} is a match of the regexp.”
}
This is a match of the regexp.
this is a match of the regexp.
this is a match of the regexp.

Regards,
JJ

On Wednesday, April 26, 2006, at 02:21PM, Xeno C.
[email protected] wrote:

xc

Help everyone. If you can’t do that, then at least be nice.

5

On Apr 27, 2006, at 1:58 AM, Xeno C. wrote:

Thank you all for the answers. I should have guessed to look at
the String methods.

Sincerely, Xeno
xc

Just a random thought, but doesn’t it seem like this question belongs
in some sort of FAQ? (Probably this one: http://www.rubycentral.com/
faq/rubyfaqall.html) It seems a pretty common question, especially
for people coming from perl.

6

Thank you all for the answers. I should have guessed to look at the
String methods.

Sincerely, Xeno
xc