From: dblack@...
Date: 2006-07-13T04:42:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Help with a regexp

Hi --

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006, ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 dblack@wobblini.net wrote:
>
>> Hi --
>> 
>> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:
>> 
>>> My problem is that I have a string like this: "3:foo6:monkey5:sheep", 
>>> which I need to separate into ["foo", "monkey", "sheep"]. The values can 
>>> contain numeric values, so splitting at \d won't work. This is what makes 
>>> it difficult:
>>>
>>>  "3:ab23:cat5:sheep" => ["ab2", "cat", "sheep"]
>>> 
>>> I need to grab the number, then read that many characters, then read the 
>>> next number, etc.
>> 
>> How do you know, in the case of:
>>
>>  2:ab23:cat
>> 
>> which of the two is invalid?
>
> the second.  it's invalid here
>
>  2:ab23:cat
>            ^
>            ^
>
> virtual position 10.

How do you know?  The first one could be wrong and the second one
right.


David

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