Re: Trying to understand \G

On Jul 17, 2004, at 0:05, [e-mail] wrote:
> 900,
> Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote in [ruby-core:03200]:
>> |I'm being silly again, but I can't get \G to work with String.index. 
>> If
>> |I run the following, it loops writing out 0,a,0,a,0,a...
>>
>> '\G' only works for repeating match methods, String#gsub, String#scan,
>> etc.
>
> Or when starting position is given.
>
>   last = 0
>   while index = words.index(PATT, last)
>     puts index
>     puts $&
>     last = Regexp.last_match.end(0)
>   end

I thought I understood this, but when I tried to document it, I found 
out that I didn't. Is there any reasonable situation in which adding \G 
to a pattern is useful? For example, in the loop above, I believe the 
only place a \G may occur is at the front of the pattern. If that's the 
case, then isn't  /\G<rest>/ equivalent to /<rest>/?


Cheers

Dave