From: Rajinder Yadav <devguy.ca@...>
Date: 2009-12-27T13:02:12+09:00
Subject: Re: How to truncate the spaces in the front of a line

Phillip Gawlowski wrote:
> 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
> 
> 

a more convenient way is to use one of the strip methods

irb(main):004:0> "         spaces in front".lstrip
=> "spaces in front"

irb(main):005:0> "spaces in back      ".rstrip
=> "spaces in back"

irb(main):006:0> "       spaces on both side      ".strip
=> "spaces on both side"

-- 
Kind Regards,
Rajinder Yadav

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