From: Steve Howell <showell30@...>
Date: 2010-03-30T13:40:11+09:00
Subject: Re: return number of spaces at the beginning of a line

On Mar 29, 9:35 pm, Steve Howell <showel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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')

Oops, still not sure whether this is ideal, but this is better than my
other version:

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