From: David Flanagan <david@...>
Date: 2007-12-19T09:53:27+09:00
Subject: named captures assigning to local variables

I've just been browsing ruby-dev. For an english speaker, it is kind of 
like running 'strings' on a binary file... :)

I see that one of Matz's last remaining issues is handling the 
assignment of named captures to local variables.

This is just a request to have this explained on this list when it is 
finished.  Right now, it seems only to work with regexp literals and the 
=~ operator.  It doesn't work if you assign the regexp to a variable and 
then use =~ with the variable.  And it doesn't work if you use match() 
instead of =~.

Have you considered having the assignment depend on the quoting syntax 
for the named capture?  (?<foo>) could assign to a variable and (?'foo') 
could not do the assignment. That way those of us who are uneasy with 
magic regexp stuff could avoid it if we don't want it.

	David