From: "Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner" <wonado@...>
Date: 2007-01-26T23:35:05+09:00
Subject: Re: simple question about Ruby Regext

Peter Bailey schrieb:
> Why is this true?
> 
> "banana" =~ /an*/
> =>1
As already said, it is the position of the match.

> I thought that RUBY, like PERL, is inherently greedy and it would find
> all instances of said regex expression.

If you want to find all matches, you should use "scan" in Ruby. There are two 
possibilities. the first one...

   str = 'banana'
   str.scan(/an/) # => ["an", "an"]

...will produce an Array object for each match (see "ri String#scan" for 
details). The second one will invoke a block for each match.

   str = 'banana'
   str.scan(/an/) do
     puts "#$`<#$&>#$'"
   end

produces:

   b<an>ana
   ban<an>a

Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner