From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2005-12-07T10:12:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Question concerning multiline regexps and best practice

Oliver Andrich wrote:

> This little "baby" does the job. As ruby doesn't have named groups in
> regexps, I have to add comment lines (?#...) to document the invidual
> groups. This would glutter the thing even more. Now ruby has these nice
> HERE documents, %r{...} and so on. I would be happy if I could achieve
> something like that.
>
> msg_rx = %r{
> ^\x01?
> (?# comment for the line)
> ([a-zA-Z]{3,4})(?P<msgnum>\\d{3,4})\s
> (\\d)\s
> (?# comment for the line)
> ([a-zA-Z]{1,3})\s
> (?# comment for the line)
> (\\d{1,4})\s
> (.*)\r\n*
> (.*)\r\n*
> \x02
> (?# comment for the line)
> (?:(.*)=\\s*\r\n)?
> (?# comment for the line)
> (.*)
> \x03.*
> (?# comment for the line)
> (\\d{2})(\\d{2})(\\d{2})\s
> (?# comment for the line)
> ([a-zA-Z]{3})\s
> (?# comment for the line)
> (\\d{2})
> }

Use extended mode:

msg_rx = %r{
  ^\x01?
 # comment for the line
  ([a-zA-Z]{3,4}) (<msgnum>\d{3,4})  \s
  (\d)  \s
}x