From: Rob Biedenharn <Rob@...>
Date: 2007-10-27T08:47:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Newlines included in bracket negation

On Oct 26, 2007, at 7:23 PM, 7stud -- wrote:
> Jesús Gabriel y Galán wrote:
>> On 10/27/07, Phrogz <phrogz@mac.com> wrote:
>>>> => ["h", "", "day"]
>>> h.+day/, which does not match.
>> I need more sleep, for sure. I was of course thinking on the first  
>> "h"
>> and the last "day". That explains it :-)
>
> A clue was in the capture results:
>
> rb(main):036:0> re = /(h)(.*)(day)/
> => /(h)(.*)(day)/
> irb(main):037:0> "happy\n\nbirthday".match(re).captures
> => ["h", "", "day"]
>
> The fact that the (.*) matched nothing was an indication that  
> something
> was amiss.

Nothing amiss there at all.  the * is match "zero or more times" and  
so it is perfectly fine to match zero occurrences of any character  
(except newline) between the 'h' and the 'day'

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com