From: Jamis Buck <jamis@37signals.com>
Date: 2005-06-12T04:29:27+09:00
Subject: Behavior of $* in String subclasses

Here's an interesting snafu I ran into today:

   class Substring < String
     def sub!(pat, r=nil, &b)
       super(pat, r, &b)
       # --------------------
       p $1 # -> "ll"
       # --------------------
     end
   end

   s = Substring.new("hello")
   s.sub!(/(ll)/, "r")

   # --------------------
   p $1 # -> nil!!!
   # --------------------

The captured subgroup in the regexp is correctly assigned to $1 when  
examined inside the overridden #sub! method, but when checked after  
the invocation of the overridden method, the value of $1 is nil.

Why?

- Jamis