From: Peter Szinek <peter@...>
Date: 2007-04-07T02:27:02+09:00
Subject: Re: string scan question

srinsriram@gmail.com wrote:
> Here is a simple test case
> 
> s = <VariableValue>\nXXX\n</VariableValue>\n\n<VariableValue>
> \n<Choice> Administrative Support - Supervisors<Choice>\n</
> VariableValue>\n\n"
> 
> for the VariableValue tag, there should be 2 array elements  \nXXX
> \n    AND   \n<Choice> Administrative Support - Supervisors<Choice>\n
> 
> s.scan(/<VariableValue>(.+?)</).flatten   returns an empty array

Ah OK, I did not know there can be other tags inside. This works better:

s.scan(/<VariableValue>(.+?)<\/VariableValue>/m).flatten

(note the 'm' flag for multiline)

however, to really match your example, I needed this:

s.scan(/<VariableValue>(.+?)<\/\n?VariableValue>/m).flatten

are you sure there is a line break between / and the tag name?

Cheers,
Peter

-- 
http://www.rubyrailways.com :: Ruby and Web2.0 blog
http://scrubyt.org :: Ruby web scraping framework
http://rubykitchensink.ca/ :: The indexed archive of all things Ruby