From: Mike Meng <meng.yan@...>
Date: 2005-08-18T14:31:15+09:00
Subject: Novice Q: What's the difference between /\s*/ and /(\s)*/?

Hi,
  I'm new to Ruby and reading 'Programming Ruby 2/e' now. I encountered
a tricky problem while reading chapter 5, 'String" section. Here is the
problem:

# code
line = '/jazz/j00319.mp3 | 2:58 | Louis Armstrong | Wonderful World'
file, duration, artist, title = line.chomp.split(/\s*\|\s*/)
# code end

Run the code we get:
file=='/jazz/j00319.mp3'
duration=='2:58'
artist=='Louis Armstrong'
title=='Wonderful World'

While if I change the regex pattern in 'split' to /(\s)*\|(\s)*/,
that is,
# code
line = '/jazz/j00319.mp3 | 2:58 | Louis Armstrong | Wonderful World'
file, duration, artist, title = line.chomp.split(/(\s)*\|(\s)*/)
# code end

We get:
file=='/jazz/j00319.mp3'
duration==' '
artist==' '
title=='2:58'

What makes the differece? Any comments are appreciated.