From: Matthew Smillie <M.B.Smillie@...>
Date: 2006-07-22T22:22:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Question about a regular expression

On Jul 22, 2006, at 13:51, Diego Amicabile wrote:

> Hi fellow ruby-ers
>
> I don't understand this regular expression
>
> /\S+ </
>
> It is from the ruby quiz "Secret Santas"
>
> http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz2.html
>
> What does it exactly mean ? The "<" confuses me

In this case, the '<' is just a character.  So, it's looking for a  
series of one or more non-whitespace characters, followed by a space,  
followed by a '<'

/\S+ </.match("blah match_this_section < but not this")[0]
=> "match_this_section <"

matthew smillie.