From: John Johnson <johnatl@...>
Date: 2006-04-29T06:02:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Counting words

One way is like this:

irb(main):020:0> a="This is a test."
=> "This is a test."
irb(main):021:0> a.scan(/\b\S.*?\b/).size
=> 4
irb(main):022:0>

The Regexp in line 21 rewritten in a more readable form is:

a.scan(/
  \b        (?# a word boundary )
  \S        (?# a character that is not a space )
  .*?       (?# maybe (*) some more characters (.), but don't be greedy (?))
  \b        (?# a word boundary )
  /x

btw, the Regexp above actually works because of the x at the end, meaning an extended regexp.

Regards,
  JJ

On Friday, April 28, 2006, at 04:35PM, Jamal Mazrui <Jamal.Mazrui@fcc.gov> wrote:

>I've research this but am still having trouble getting it right ....
>Can someone give me code that counts the number of words in a string via
>RegExp and MatchData objects?  I think I'd like a word to be defined as
>contiguous characters surrounded by white space (or the start/end of the
>string), though am open to other interpretations.
>
>Jamal
>
>
>


---
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