From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2007-08-29T13:46:52+09:00
Subject: Re: gsub help

From: hurcan solter [mailto:hsolter@gmail.com] 
#   line.gsub!(/\s*([=]+)\s*/ ,' \1 ')
# 
# But it applies every = on the line ofc, but I want to exclude
# expressions between quotation marks ("sth=sth") or regexp (/sth=sth/).

after reviewing WJames post (thanks james), i think you are not far to the solution. You just need to include the exceptions first, then gsub further to that. gsub accepts a block, so flexibility is unlimited, eg,

> str
=> "/x==9/ { print \"x==9 and AWK is everywhere!\"; x=9 }"

let's create our main regex sub and test if we can get back to the original str,

> p str.gsub(/\S*\s*([=]+)\s*\S*/){|s| s }
"/x==9/ { print \"x==9 and AWK is everywhere!\"; x=9 }"
=> nil

ok. now let's view our captures. let's put some markers/tags.

> p str.gsub(/\S*\s*([=]+)\s*\S*/){|s| "<<"+s+">>" }
"<</x==9/>> { print <<\"x==9>> and AWK is everywhere!\"; <<x=9>> }"
=> nil

ah, i think we're capturing right for this case of str

now let's test the inner substitution. note the gsub inside the block. the expression gets simpler since we've already filtered thru the first/main regexp.

> p str.gsub(/\S*\s*([=]+)\s*\S*/){|s| s.gsub(/(=+)/,' \1 ') }   
"/x == 9/ { print \"x == 9 and AWK is everywhere!\"; x = 9 }"
=> nil

ok.
now, let us combine that one w the first one (the noop), using an inline if (i'm assumming you want a one-liner) filtering thru the exception you want, ie, no ["\/]

> p str.gsub(/\S*\s*([=]+)\s*\S*/){|s| s=~/["\/]/ ? s : s.gsub(/(=+)/,' \1 ') }
"/x==9/ { print \"x==9 and AWK is everywhere!\"; x = 9 }"
=> nil

is that ok?

kind regards -botp