From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2007-09-19T12:39:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Regexp help

From: Jeremy Woertink [mailto:jeremywoertink@gmail.com] 
# What I want to do is determine if a string includes 2 special 
# characters a semi-colon and a question mark.
# irb(main):009:0> encoding = ";6277200301500269=?"
# => ";6277200301500269=?"
# irb(main):010:0> encoding.include?(%r{;\?}.to_s)
# => false

start simple,

check if a string contains a ; or ?

irb(main):095:0> encoding[/;|\?/]
=> ";"

check if a string starts w a ; and ends with a ?

irb(main):096:0> encoding[/^;.*\?$/]
=> ";6277200301500269=?"

string[regex] returns the matched (sub)string (wc is true in ruby)
otherwise it returns nil (wc is false in ruby)

kind regards -botp