From: "Berger, Daniel" <Daniel.Berger@...>
Date: 2005-12-22T07:11:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Odd behavior of String#scan



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Showalter [mailto:bob_showalter@taylorwhite.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 2:49 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: Odd behavior of String#scan
> 
> 
> Warren Brown wrote:
> >     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?
> 
> I would suggest:
> 
>    'abcSTARTdef,ghi,jkl,ENDmno'.match(/START(.*)END/)[1].split(',')
> 
> I don't know of a way to accomplish it in one step. 

I don't think it's possible without lookbehind assertions.  Maybe
Oniguruma supports this.

Regards,

Dan