From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-04-28T02:05:06+09:00
Subject: Re: how to match any character with ruby regexp?

On 27.04.2008 18:44, Nanyang Zhan wrote:
> I am writing a method to strip out <a> (the link tag) from input text,
> and I use the  gsub method to do the job:
>>> str = "please vist <a href=""http://www.abc.com"" title=""abc"">abc.com</a> for more info."
>>> str.gsub(Regexp.new("<\/?a(.)*?>"), "")
>>> =>"please vist abc.com for more info."
> 
> It seems work well, but I'm not confident that the (.)* will safelly
> match all the characters inside a <a> tag, for example, what if there is
> a new line?

irb(main):004:0> "a\nb".match(/.+/).to_a
=> ["a"]
irb(main):005:0> "a\nb".match(/.+/m).to_a
=> ["a\nb"]

> So, for ruby regex, which symbol can be surely used to represent any
> character of a string? Thanks.

A dot.

	robert