From: Florian Gross <flgr@...>
Date: 2004-10-01T08:10:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Regexp question

Mark Probert wrote:

> Hi, Rubyists.

Moin!

> What is the best way of attacking field split on ';' when the string looks 
> like:
> 
>   s = 'a;b;c\;;d;'
>   s.split(/???;/)
>   => ["a", "b", "c\;", "d"]
> 
> Or is it best to use s.each_byte and do it by hand?

This works, (even with escaped escape characters) but you might be 
better off doing it by hand to keep complexity low:

> irb(main):025:0> str = "hello;world;foo\\;bar;no escape\\\\;blar"; puts str                      
> hello;world;foo\;bar;no escape\\;blar                                                            
> => nil                                                                                           
> irb(main):026:0> str.scan(/(?:(?!\\).(?:\\{2})*\\;|[^;])+/).map { |str| str.gsub(/\\(.)/, '\1') }
> => ["hello", "world", "foo;bar", "no escape\\", "blar"]                                          

Regards,
Florian Gross