From: Bernard Kenik <renard@...>
Date: 2007-07-25T06:00:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there a replacement for sub?

ruby-talk-admin@ruby-lang.org wrote:
>
> bbiker wrote:
> <snip>
>> You might consider adding the following, so you have a matching
>> replacement set for sub, sub!, gsub, and gsub!
>>
>> You can think of gsubn and gsubn! as no nil returns   :>)
>>
>> class String
>>   def subn!(pattern, replacement, n = 1)
>>     n.times { self.sub!(pattern, replacement) }
>>     self
>>   end
>>
>>   def subn(pattern, replacement, n = 1)
>>     return self if n < 1
>>     @str = self.sub(pattern, replacement)
>>     (n-1).times { @str = @str.sub(pattern, replacement)  }
>
> Is there any reason you used the above three lines instead of:
>       @str = self
>       n.times { @str = @str.sub(pattern, replacement) }
>
> As I mentioned in an earlier post times seems to work fine with zero 
> or negative values not changing the string.  The replacement code 
> seems "cleaner" but I may be missing some gotcha that your code prevents.
> Again, thanks for improving my knowledge of Ruby.
>
You are absolutely correct!!!  Your improvement does what you expect it 
to do.