From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2002-04-04T00:59:12+09:00
Subject: Re: regular expression question

Hello --

On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Firestone, Mark - Technical Support wrote:

> Thanks for the help with the tread questions guys... I have one about (gasp)
> regular expresions.  hate hate hate.
>
> I want to seperate a string of commands seperated by semi-colons...
>
> here's what I have so far by way of a test...
>
> happy = input.scan(/[0-9 a-z]+(?=;)/)
>
> this does what I want, almost.  I only get strings with semicolons AFTER
> them.  This cuts off the last command in the list.. how can I get ALL the
> strings SEPERATED by semicolons.

Just for fun, here's a pretty concise way to do this with #scan:

  input.scan(/[^;]+/)

meaning: scan for sequences of consecutive characters which are not
semi-colons.  (I'd still use #split, but anyway.)

> Regular expressions give me a headache..

I wish I had the power to convey their coolness.  I'm actually
surprised that anti-regex sentiment crops up as often as it does....
I've always thought they were so elegant and powerful, and it took me
a while to notice that not everyone agreed :-)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav