From: Phillip Gawlowski <pg@...>
Date: 2009-12-27T12:40:29+09:00
Subject: Re: How to truncate the spaces in the front of a line

On 27.12.2009 04:22, Milo Luo wrote:
> Hi, guys
> I am new to Ruby. Do you have any idea to truncate or remove the space
> in the front of a line?
irb(main):001:0> "         spaces in front".gsub /^ +/,""
=> "spaces in front"
irb(main):002:0> RUBY_VERSION
=> "1.8.6"
irb(main):003:0>

Translation:
String#gsub applies the regexp given as first argument to a given 
String, and replaces the matches with the second argument.

The regexp "^ +" (the // notation is one of the many ways to tell Ruby 
we are using a regexp) means "At the beginning of the line ("^"), find 
any spaces(" "), and then stop ("+")". More or less, anyway (I'm not a 
Regexp guru). ;)

--
Phillip Gawlowski