From: Nuralanur@...
Date: 2006-07-31T07:35:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Howto Delete 3 Leftmost Characters

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You can delete white spaces at the start and at the end of a string like  
this:
 
string="     a long string      "
string1=string.sub(/^ +/,'')
string2=string.sub(/ +$/,'')
 
The ^ stands for eliminating things at the start, the + stands for  
eliminating
1 or more occurrences of a whitespace, and the $ stands for looking to  the
end of a string.
 
I can't comment on whether it's the best way to learn about Regexp,  but
_http://www.regular-expressions.info_ (http://www.regular-expressions.info) 
has a special Ruby section.
 
If you want to know it all, there is a book Mastering Regular  Expressions
by Jeffrey Friedl, published with O'Reilly .... but maybe that's too much  
for a start.
 
Best regards,
 
Axel 

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