From: Jos Backus <josb@...>
Date: 2001-11-23T13:58:47+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26195] Re: regex/split/scan question (was: Re: Linux Magazine article)

On Fri, Nov 23, 2001 at 01:36:21PM +0900, Dave Thomas wrote:
>    ext, ext2 = /-(.*?-(.*))/.match(mbox).to_a[1,2]
> 
> That's fairly succinct  :)

Yes, but it but it breaks on things like

irb(main):007:0> ext, ext2 = /-(.*?-(.*))/.match('apache-dev').to_a[1,2]
[nil]

What I am looking for is an expression that returns a String instead of an
Array, so I can do this in two steps (just like the Perl version):

irb(main):018:0> ext = /-(.*)/.match('apache-dev-list').to_a[1,2].pop    
"dev-list"

is almost what I want except when it doesn't match:

irb(main):019:0> ext = /-(.*)/.match('apachedevlist').to_a[1,2].pop
NameError: undefined method `pop' for nil
        from (irb):19
irb(main):020:0> 

Thanks,
-- 
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