From: Jano Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2008-02-11T23:41:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Return number of matches

On Feb 11, 2008 3:24 PM, Christopher Causer <chy.causer@gmail.com> wrote:
> This seems like an easy question but I cannot find any documentation on
> it anywhere on the web.
>
> I want to write a script that will count the number of dollars in a
> string, excluding escaped dollars (ie. "\$".) My first hack was to use
> split and count the number of elements in the array, but I came unstuck
> trying to exclude \$. Surely there's a nice simple elegant solution?

Easy solution: count $ and subtract \$ ;-)

string.scan(/\$/).size - string.scan(/\\\$/).size

It's possible to do it in one regex, but it won't be nice and elegant
and I don't have the time now to try it...