From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2008-04-03T11:38:05+09:00
Subject: Re: confused by 'test'.gsub(/.*/,'x')

From: Wybo Dekker [mailto:wybo@servalys.nl] 
# sure, that works, and so does test.gsub(/.+/,'x').
# The point is that I don't understand why test.gsub(/.*/,'x') gives me 
# 'xx', since .* means: zero or more of any character, except 
# the newline 
# character, i.e.: all of the string should be replaced with a 
# single x, as far as I can see.

you can start (slowly) by comparing these two examples,

irb(main):077:0> ''.gsub(/.*/, 'x')
=> "x"

irb(main):078:0> ''.gsub(/.+/, 'x')
=> ""

kind regards -botp