From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2006-08-30T20:30:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Regular Expressions

On 30.08.2006 12:29, Peter Meier wrote:
> hi,
> 
> is there any way to reuse a group in a regular expression in ruby?
> 
> In other languages you can reuse a group by write (?<name>  ....).
> 
> But I can't figure out how to do this in ruby?
> 
> Do you have some advice?

Ruby's current regexp engine does not support named groups.  You can 
however reference by count:

 >> /(b+)a+\1/ =~ ("aaabbb"*10)
=> 3
 >> ("aaabbb"*10).scan /(b+)a+\1/
=> [["bbb"], ["bbb"], ["bbb"], ["bbb"], ["bbb"]]
 >> ("aaabbb"*10).scan /((b+)a+\2)/
=> [["bbbaaabbb", "bbb"], ["bbbaaabbb", "bbb"], ["bbbaaabbb", "bbb"], 
["bbbaaabbb", "bbb"], ["bbbaaabbb", "bbb"]]
 >>

HTH

	robert