From: "Olivier D." <nkh@..._tele2_AM.fr>
Date: 2004-07-07T21:37:36+09:00
Subject: Regexp exercise

Hi,
I have a string from which I want to extract a value. I have found four
different methods to do it:

string = "a: 1, b: 2, c: 3"
# let's say I want the value associated with b (2)

# 1st method:
value = string[/b: \d+/][/\d+/]

# 2nd method:
value = string.scan(/b: (\d+)/)[0][0]

# 3rd method:
value = nil
string.scan(/b: (\d+)/) { |val| value = val }

These three methods aren't clean and easy to understand.

I think that the best way to do it would be to use a simple match
operator like:
value = $1 if string =~ /b: (\d+)/

But on a different thread (http://tinyurl.com/38b27) someone explained
that using global variables was a bad habit not to take.

What should I do? Is the $1 method *that* bad? (after all, I just use it
inside the 'if' loop...)

-- 
Olivier D.