From: Ammar Ali <ammarabuali@...>
Date: 2010-11-19T22:50:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Multi-line regular expression match question

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Guillermo Riojas
<guillermo.riojas@gmail.com> wrote:
> I need to match anything that is enclosed in between "|-:" and "-|"
> So far i've got "/^\{\|-:$.*^-\|$/m" , this one is greedy, returning the
> complete set, instead of each match, i just haven't figure out how to
> make it reluctant enough to return one by one.

If you're using ruby 1.9 you can do us that, *? is the reluctant version of *:

  /^\|-:$.*?^-\|$/m

Note that I removed the '\{' from your original pattern. It is not
needed in this case.

If you're on 1.8, one possibility is:

  /^\|-:$(?m:.*?)(?=^-\|)^-\|$/

But there are other, probably more efficient, ways to do it as well.

> And finally, any good regular expressions book ?? =)

Jeffrey Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions is an excellent read
and covers regular expressions inside and out, literally. Here's the
amazon link:

  http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126

HTH,
Ammar