From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-04-06T23:54:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Regular expression mismatch ?

On Apr 6, 2005, at 9:44 AM, Han Holl wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Why does the following:
>
> s = "aaa aaa\n\n\nbbb bbb"
> puts(s =~ /^\s+$/)
>
> produce: 8  (instead of nil) ?

^ means the beginning a line (right after \n)
$ means the end a line (right before \n)
\s+ manes one or more whitespace characters (the \n in the middle)

Does that clarify the match?

> (If I put in only 2 newlines, it's fine).

You can't satisfy all three conditions with only two \n characters.

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II