From: Warren Brown <warrenbrown@...>
Date: 2005-12-22T06:35:03+09:00
Subject: Odd behavior of String#scan

    First off, the problem I am trying to solve can be simplified down
to:

'abcSTARTdef,ghi,jkl,ENDmno'.scan(/START([^,]*,)*END/)

    What I want is [["def,"], ["ghi,"], ["jkl,"]] (or the same thing
without the commas), and I still need a way to achieve this.  I can
accomplish it with:

'abcSTARTdef,ghi,jkl,ENDmno'.scan(/START(.*)END/)[0][0].split(/,/)

    But this does two operations where it seems like one should suffice.
Does someone know of a way to do this in a single operation?


    Back to the odd behavior, the first expression actually returns
[["jkl,"]].  I can't figure out how that is the correct answer by any
reasonable definition of "scan".  However, the equivalent String#match
does the same kind of thing, so I must be missing something.  Can
someone please explain this behavior?


    Thanks,

    - Warren Brown