From: Steve Howell <showell30@...>
Date: 2010-03-30T13:40:13+09:00
Subject: Re: return number of spaces at the beginning of a line

On Mar 29, 7:41 pm, "Jesse B." <jesse...@aol.com> wrote:
> How would I find the number of spaces at the beginning of a line before
> the occurrance of the first non-space character?
>
> Would the best method be to use a regular expression that covers all
> non-space characters and get the index of the first occurrance of that?

I think the following expresses what you are trying to do, but I do
not know if this is the most efficient or idiomatic way to do it:

    def num_leading_spaces(s)
      prefix = (s =~ /(\s*)/)
      $1.length
    end

    puts num_leading_spaces('   hello')