From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2008-09-02T00:52:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Looking for a regular pattern

On Sep 1, 2008, at 4:27 AM, David A. Black wrote:

> Hi --
>
> On Mon, 1 Sep 2008, Peter Hickman wrote:
>
>> Zhao Yi wrote:
>>> Sebastian Hungerecker wrote:
>>>> Zhao Yi wrote:
>>>>> I think this is better [.\s]
>>>> No, it's not.
>>> Why? It should match any character.
>> From the docs, http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/UsersGuide/rg/regexp.html
>>
>> |\s| space character; same as |[ \t\n\r\f]
>>
>> That is not any character it is only whitespace.
>
> Yes, but [.\s] is a character class, consisting of any character other
> than \n, plus any space including \n. So it will match any character.

No, it's not:

 >> "a" =~ /[.\n]/
=> nil

The period loses its special meaning inside a character class, so that  
class literally matches a period or a newline character.

James Edward Gray II