From: phlip <phlip2005@...>
Date: 2008-07-13T06:20:43+09:00
Subject: Re: regular expressions help

David A. Black wrote:

>> => ["hi", "hello", "hello world", "hey", "yo"]
> 
> That's not quite the result, though:

I suspect I copied the wrong line from my transcript!

But...

> 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 = 'hi hello "hello world" "hey yo"'
     p str.scan(/(?:".*")|(?:\w+)/)

  => ["hi", "hello", "\"hello world\" \"hey yo\""] # bad

     p str.scan(/(?:".*?")|(?:\w+)/)

  => ["hi", "hello", "\"hello world\"", "\"hey yo\""] # good!

(-:

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

The non-greedy matcher .*? looks cuter.

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

Using regexps as real language parsers makes certain baby deities cry...

-- 
   Phlip