From: "Michael W. Ryder" <_mwryder@...>
Date: 2007-07-20T12:00:06+09:00
Subject: Is there a replacement for sub?

I was trying to come up with a way to remove x instances of a character 
from a string and came up with a problem.  If I enter:

a = "a b c d e f"
for i in 1..3
   a = a.sub!(' ', '')
end
puts a  ==> returns 'abcd e f' which is correct.

But if I enter:

a = "a b c d e f"
for i in 1..10
   a = a.sub!(' ', '')
end
puts a  ==> returns error.rb:3: private method `sub!' called for 
nil:NilClass (NoMethodError, and a is now nil.

What I am looking for is a way to remove the first n instances of a 
blank from the string without wiping out the string if it does not 
contain at least n blanks.  I assume there is a way to do this with 
regular expressions, but have not found it yet.  This is something an 
editor I liked, UCEDIT, on the CDC Cyber had in the 70's.