From: Ross Bamford <rossrt@...>
Date: 2006-09-29T07:00:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Regular expression reformating a value

On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 00:51 +0900, Steven Ketcham wrote:
>  
> I am not really sure how to do this. I have a series of number that need
> parsed. Strip the zeros, if a caret 
> exists replace it with a slash.
>  
> 1.) 000123^2 - should be 123/2
> 2.) 1^2 - should be 1/2
> 3.) 0001 - should be 1
> 4.) 000123 - should be 123

Only lightly tested, but does this do what you're after?

"000123^2".gsub(/(^0+)?(\d*)(\^)?/) { "#{$2}#{'/' if $3}" }
# => "123/2"

"1^2".gsub(/(^0+)?(\d*)(\^)?/) { "#{$2}#{'/' if $3}" }
# => "1/2"

"0001".gsub(/(^0+)?(\d*)(\^)?/) { "#{$2}#{'/' if $3}" }
# => "1"

"000123".gsub(/(^0+)?(\d*)(\^)?/) { "#{$2}#{'/' if $3}" }
# => "123"

I'm assuming you mean only leading zeroes, e.g:

"0001^0001^1".gsub(/(^0+)?(\d*)(\^)?/) { "#{$2}#{'/' if $3}" }
# => "1/0001/1"

If that's not what you want, I think you could strip all the leading
zeroes with a small change:

"0001^0001^1".gsub(/(0+)?(\d*)(\^)?/) { "#{$2}#{'/' if $3}" }
# => "1/1/1"

Hope that helps,
-- 
Ross Bamford - rosco@roscopeco.REMOVE.co.uk