From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2009-10-06T17:15:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Opinions wanted! Is Ruby a good choice for...

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Kioko -- <mail_noxx@web.de> wrote:
> If you want to match strings against each other and want to use
> wildcards you need to use regexp. "Basic use" of ? and * are not
> supported and you need to create a workaround. (my prior question to
> this: http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/194761#849565 )
> The bad side is that IRC sets bans in this form and not in regexp, also
> a normal user would set its userhost as mynick!*myident@*.some.thing and
> wouldn't use regexp, either.

It's not too hard to handle this sort of thing - just convert the
pattern to a regexp and store the regexp internally. Conversion is
simply a matter of

Regexp.compile(pattern.gsub('.', '\.').gsub('*', '.*'))

that is, replace "." with "\." to match a literal . character, then
replace * with .* since that's the regexp equivalent.

> Is it possible to code such a bot(net) by using Ruby? (sure, but I don't
> like workarounds)
> .. or maybe a better question:
> Would you advise it?

Absolutely. Ruby's one of the most maintainable languages I've used,
and I've used a lot. Plus it's a lot of fun to code in.

martin