From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2008-06-25T11:27:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Regex extracting certain characters

From: Clement Ow [mailto:clement.ow@asia.bnpparibas.com] 
# What I want to test for is actually just solely '/2008' which can be 
# anywhere in the path name, maybe citing some examples would 
# be clearer.
# These are the kind of strings i want to test for:
# C:/2008/ruby or C:/ruby/test/2008 or C:/ruby/test/2008/testing
# These are the kind of strings that I want to eliminate:
# C:/20080229/ruby or C:/ruby/test/20080502 or 
# C:/ruby/test/20080405/testing or C:/29022008/ruby
# In other words, I want to just test for "/" followed by "2008" in a 
# given string.

the solutions given by Stefano are great. just try them.

i can show some other ways, eg

a
#=> ["C:/2008/ruby", "C:/ruby/test/2008", "C:/ruby/test/2008/testing", "C:/20080229/ruby", "C:/ruby/test/20080502",  C:/ruby/test/20080405/testing", "C:/29022008/ruby"]

a.grep /(^|\/)2008(\/|$)/
#=> ["C:/2008/ruby", "C:/ruby/test/2008", "C:/ruby/test/2008/testing"]

and again, another non-regex way,

a.select{|path| path.split("/").any?{|x| x=="2008"}}
#=> ["C:/2008/ruby", "C:/ruby/test/2008", "C:/ruby/test/2008/testing"]

btw, if you have "C:/ruby/2008/20080502", would you accept it?

it would also be nice if you could show sample code snippet of your problem. remember, there are many ways ;)

kind regards -botp