From: Joel VanderWerf <joelvanderwerf@...>
Date: 2011-04-27T01:31:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Replace any multiple whitespaces with single white space

On 04/26/2011 05:03 AM, Brian Candler wrote:
> Joel VanderWerf wrote in post #994935:
>> On 04/25/2011 11:44 AM, Michelle Pace wrote:
>>> pattern incorrect?
>>>
>>> descrip = "1/4 WELDING    LEVER FRONT DRW 14844-C  MAT  WMA1CM-WLFRONT"
>>> descrip.sub!(/\s+/,' ')
>>> puts descrip
>>
>> sub! only affects the *first* match. You can substitute globally with
>> gsub. Also you might as well only match 2 or more spaces:
>>
>> descrip.gsub!(/\s\s+/,' ')
>
> Those are not equivalent, because \s matches more than just ASCII 0x20.
>
> d1 = "foo\tbar\tbaz"
> d1.gsub(/\s+/,' ')    # "foo bar baz"
> d1.gsub(/\s\s+/,' ')  # "foo\tbar\tbaz"

You're right. What I said in another post about preserving tabs isn't 
what the original sub! call was doing anyway.

(sorry for the empty reply previously)