From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2008-03-13T09:53:16+09:00
Subject: Re: String method to take subsections

Hi --

On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Glenn wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for a method for the String class that returns an array of strings based on two input strings.
>
> For example, if you had the string 'xxxxxa1byyyyya2bzzzzzzz' I'd like it to return the smaller strings between 'a' and b', but I don't want the smaller strings to include either 'a' or 'b'.
>
> So, 'xxxxxa1byyyyya2bzzzzzzz'.method_x('a', 'b') would return ["1", "2"].
>
> If you had the string 'a1b2' and tried 'a1b2'.method_x('a', 'c') you'd get nil because 'c' is obviously not in the String that's calling the method.
>
> Likewise, if you tried 'a1b2'.method_x('b', 'a') it would also return nil since there's no string between 'b' and 'a' (so the order matters).
>
> I looked but didn't see anything quite like this.

Have a look at String#scan.

   'xxxxxa1byyyyya2bzzzzzzz'.scan(/a(.*?)b/)
   => [["1"], ["2"]]

It may not be an exact fit for the calling syntax you want but you
could wrap it in something else.


David

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