From: Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...>
Date: 2006-08-25T10:13:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Determinig if 3 characters in a row are the same?

Here is a minor variation that's good to keep in mind should you ever  
need find a lot more than 3 chars in row. Saves typing a whole lot of  
'\1's.

# Find 8 of the same char in a row
/(.)\1{7}/ =~ 'zyzyzxxxxxxxxzyzyz'
p $& #=> "xxxxxxxx"
/(.)\1{7}/ =~ 'zyzyzxxxxxxzyzyz'
p $& #=> nil

Regards, Morton

On Aug 24, 2006, at 8:02 PM, Ben Johnson wrote:

> Sorry for the noob question, but is there a fast and efficient way to
> determine if there are 3 of the same charater in a row in a string?  
> I'm
> sure this could be done in regex but I am not a black belt in regex.
>
> thanks for your help.