From: Stefano Crocco <stefano.crocco@...>
Date: 2008-06-24T16:53:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Regex extracting certain characters

On Tuesday 24 June 2008, Stefano Crocco wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 June 2008, Clement Ow wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I have 2 path names :
> >
> > C:/Ruby/20080205/2008
> > C:/Ruby/2008
> >
> > I need a regular expression which can select just 2008 and utilise the
> > string that contains just 2008 instead of 20080205.
> >
> > I tried using /2008/ but apparently it also picks up strings like
> > 20080205.
> > is there a way to rearrange the regexp such that only 2008 is selected?
>
> If the part you're interested with is at the end of the string, you can use
>
> /\d{4}\Z/
>
> which matches four digits followed by the end of the string. Otherwise, you
> can use this:
>
> /\d{4}(?:[^\d]|\Z)/
>
> This will match four digits followed by either a non-digit character or by
> the end of the string.
>
> I hope this helps
>
> Stefano

Sorry, I think I misunderstood what you wanted. You need a regexp which 
matches only the second string, while I suggested you two regexps which 
matched the 2008 part of both. 

A possible solution is this:

/[^\d]\/2008\Z/

which matches a non-digit character, followed by a / followed by 2008 and by 
the end of the string.

Stefano