From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2008-07-13T06:02:29+09:00
Subject: Re: regular expressions help

Hi --

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008, phlip wrote:

> Axel wrote:
>
>> str = 'hi hello  "hello world" hey yo'
>> str.gsub!( / \"  [^\"]*  \" /x ) {|e|  e[1..-2].gsub(' ', "\007") }
>> result = str.scan( / [\w\007]+ /x ).map {|e|  e.gsub("\007", " ") }
>> p result
>
>    str = 'hi hello  "hello world" hey yo'
>    p str.scan(/(".*")|(\w+)/).flatten.compact
>
> => ["hi", "hello", "hello world", "hey", "yo"]

That's not quite the result, though:

   >> str = 'hi hello  "hello world" hey yo'
   => "hi hello  \"hello world\" hey yo"
   >> str.scan(/(".*")|(\w+)/).flatten.compact
   => ["hi", "hello", "\"hello world\"", "hey", "yo"]

The "'s are returned as part of the string '"hello world"'. Also, you
get the wrong result if you have two quoted strings in a row, because
of the greediness:

>> str = 'one "two" "three" four'
=> "one \"two\" \"three\" four"
>> str.scan(/(".*")|(\w+)/).flatten.compact
=> ["one", "\"two\" \"three\"", "four"]    # only three strings

Try this:

   str.scan(/"([^"]+)"|(\w+)/).flatten.compact

Of course this assumes no embedded/escaped/nested "'s, etc.


David

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