From: Intransition <transfire@...>
Date: 2009-12-07T01:21:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Regexp.escape with un-escapes



On Dec 6, 10:33 am, Marnen Laibow-Koser <mar...@marnen.org> wrote:
> Why, yes!  Use a regexp to find the (( )) bits, and then extract them,
> don't escape them, and paste the whole regexp together.  It's a bit
> ironic to me that in a regexp-handling routine, you're doing brute-force
> index searches. :)

You are right, it is ironic! Your suggestion helped some. I came up
with:

    def __when_string_to_regexp(str)
      rexps = []
      str = str.gsub(/\(\((.*?)\)\)/) do |m|
        rexps << ['(' + $1 + ')']
        "%s"
      end
      str = Regexp.escape(str)
      str = str % rexps
      str = str.gsub(/(\\\ )+/, '\s+')
      Regexp.new(str, Regexp::IGNORECASE)
    end

It's still not perfect b/c it means end users won't be able to use
"%s" in a string without it messing up --stitching it back together
seems to be the hard part. But I'll keep working on it.

Thanks.