From: Matthew Westcott <gasman@...>
Date: 2004-11-24T23:53:00+09:00
Subject: Block form of 'scan' with one set of parens

Hi,
Newbieish syntax question - I'm using the block form of 'scan' like this:

"<foo,bar> <foo,baz> <foo,blarg>".scan(/<(\w*),(\w*)>/) { |first,second|
	puts "#{first.upcase} and #{second.upcase}\n"
}

which works fine. However, if the regex only has one set of parentheses, 
I can't do

"<bar> <baz> <blarg>".scan(/<(\w*)>/) { |first|
	puts "#{first.upcase}\n"
}

because it assumes that I want 'first' to be an array of all the matched 
groups, and so it dies with
"undefined method `upcase' for ["bar"]:Array (NameError)".

Is there any way to persuade Ruby to treat |first| as a (singleton) list 
of strings to be assigned? I can use |first,dummy| as a workaround, but 
is there a neater way that I'm missing?

Thanks,
- Matthew