From: james.d.masters@...
Date: 2007-05-10T02:45:03+09:00
Subject: Re: wildcard arrays or lists

On May 9, 10:14 am, anansi <kaz...@oleco.net> wrote:
> I wondered if it is possible to tell ruby to accept wildcards in arrays
> or lists. I have a function which relys on .each and accepts arrays and
> lists of IP's. Is it possible to use wildcards in an array like
>
> buff = Array(127.0.*.*)
>
> of couse this is not working but is there any way to do this? Or is my
> only option to fill the array "by hand" with a loop with every single IP?

The problem is what do you mean by "*"?  Is it limited to numbers or
can letters be included?  Since you're specifying an IP address in
this case, you are probably limiting it to a finite set of positive
integers.  You could use a number of Ruby iterators to fill in all
possible combinations (Array#upto immediately comes to mind; ie:
0.upto(127) {|i| buff.push "127.0.#{i}.0"} - of course you'll need to
have two loops to fill in the two last numbers).

But I'm curious as to why you want to do this in the first place.  I'm
thinking that a regular expression might be more suitable; however, I
can't be sure without more information.