From: Young Moon <phaneee5@...>
Date: 2007-12-29T21:30:01+09:00
Subject: Re: trimming leading zeros

On Dec 29, 5:00 pm, Dipesh Batheja <dipesh_bath...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is there any function in ruby which allows you to trim leading zeros (or
> any specific character) from a string. Or if there is some reg
> expression that i can use?
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Hi,

for simple character replacement, you may do something like
"####helloworld".gsub!(/^#+/,'')
the same can be written in String class if you use this too often,
class String
    def trim_lead(n)
        self.gsub!(/^#{n}+/,'')
    end
end
puts "00001234".trim_lead("0")

but when you use this to replace any special characters used
internally by regex (for e.g., $)
you have to do something like "$$$1234".trim_lead("\\$")
Others may suggest better ways.