From: Mark Thomas <mark@...>
Date: 2009-05-20T20:30:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Problem with Regular Expression

On May 19, 12:54 pm, Mario Ruiz <tcbl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm replacing a string using:
> xmlString.gsub!(/:#{tagName}>#{oldValue}<\//i,":" + tagName + ">" +
> value + "</")

In general, it's not a good idea to parse XML with regular
expressions. They tend to be more fragile. What happens if there is an
attribute on the tag? Extra spaces around the brackets? The expression
breaks.

If you want something more robust, use an XML parser. As a bonus, your
code will also be more readable.

doc = Nokogiri::XML(xmlString)
doc.xpath("//mytag").each do |tag|
  tag.content = value
end

-- Mark

(I'm surprised Aaron didn't respond with such an example!)