From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-12-21T19:12:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Regex with multiple returns

List Recv wrote:
> Is there a Ruby regex that can return all of the following:
>
boringstuff(returnthisplease)notthis(butthis)dontwantthis(butIdowantthisno
matterhowmanyparenthiesisthereare)
>
> If I only had one pair of parens, I would just do:
> /[^\(\)]+\((\w+?)\)/
>
> but for varying amounts I don't know how to do it.
>
> (Maybe I could group the whole thing in parens and put a + after it -
> but then it would return the whole thing also - is there a way around
> this?)

>>
'boringstuff(returnthisplease)notthis(butthis)dontwantthis(butIdowantthisn
omatterhowmanyparenthiesisthereare)'.scan(/\(([^)]*)\)/).map {|m|m[0]}
=> ["returnthisplease", "butthis",
"butIdowantthisnomatterhowmanyparenthiesisthereare"]

    robert