From: Rob Biedenharn <Rob@...>
Date: 2009-09-04T23:52:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Regular expressions - string substitution


On Sep 4, 2009, at 10:24 AM, Ne Scripter wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> A quick question if I have a string like so
>
> 000000100
>
> and I want to remove the leading 0's to leave me with a string like so
>
> 100
>
> What is the best way to do this? initially I was using
> string.delete("0") but that obviously deletes every 0 and is not the
> desired outcome. I then though string.gsub(/^0/, "") however this only
> gets rid of the very first 0. Does anyone have any suggestions?
>
> Thanks a lot
> --  


string.sub(/^0*/,'')

Or /^0+/ since both work if there are zeroes, but find nothing if the  
first character is not a 0.

If your intention is to convert to a number, then one of the other  
responses will work, but since you presented a string and asked to be  
left with a string, I wanted to be sure you saw this simple tweak to  
what you'd already discovered.

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com