From: Ammar Ali <ammarabuali@...>
Date: 2012-04-01T05:26:49+09:00
Subject: Re: regexp replace every other one

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 11:09 PM, gabe gabriellini <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
> thank you Ammar

You're welcome!

> The only problem i have is when i use a string like this one:
>
> puts "gabriel y martha iba gtz ibanez nat".gsub(/(\A|\s)([a-zA-Z]{3})
> ($|\s)/," Gutierrez ")
>
> the gtz after the iba does not get replaced

This is the same problem i mentioned. The pattern matches:

- the beginning of line (\A) or a space (\s)
- followed by 3 alphabet characters ([a-zA-Z]{3})
- followed by end of line ($) or a space (\s)

When this matches iba, it matchs " iba " (that is space iba space).
When it gets to the gtz part, it doesn't match because it needs to
match a beginning of a line (\A) or a space (\s) again, but these
space before it has already been matched. So it fails.

To help in understanding this, add an extra space between the ibz and
gtz. Then it will work.

Good luck,
Ammar