From: Daniel Waite <rabbitblue@...>
Date: 2007-10-31T08:51:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Why, oh, why, little regexp?

Stanislav Sedov wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 08:14:01AM +0900 Daniel Waite mentioned:
>> 'cost * tax'.match(/([a-z]+)*/).to_a
>> => ["cost", "cost"]
>> 
>> Why?
>> 
> 
> Well, the regexp always matches the longest possible string.
> What did you wrote is effectively equialent to ([a-z]*).
> The single regexp can't match multiple strings, it always matches
> one. It can't match the space after the 'cost' either, since this
> symbol wasn't included to your regexp.
> 
> In case, if you want to match two words, you should write e.g.
> ([[:alpha:]]+)[[:space:]]+([[:alpha:]]+)
> This regexp will match two words separated by a space.
> Regexp can't match an undefined number of words, you should know
> in advance which number of words you want to match.
> 
> For more infor on regexps see e.g. re_format(7).

Hmm... if what you say is true, why does the second poster's solution 
capture multiple words? Wait, I know why. String#scan is different than 
string#match. Interesting...

So how does that work if I wanted to match ALL occurrences of \w+ 
WITHOUT scan?
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