From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2002-06-10T09:03:31+09:00
Subject: Re: String.left?

Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Philip Mak wrote:
> 
> > Is there a function that acts like String.left? I'd like to be able to
> > get the leftmost x characters of the string. e.g.:
> 
> String#slice and it's synonym String#[ ]
> 
> ~$ ruby -e 'p "1234567890"[0,4]' # from pos 0, 4 chars
> "1234"
> ~$ ruby -e 'p "1234567890"[0..3]' # chars of given range
> "1234"
> ~$ ruby -e 'p "1234567890"[/^.{4}/]' # with a regexp
> "1234"
> 
> Pick your favorite ;)

..and decide how you want to handle strings shorter than 4 :)

p "123"[0,4]     # ==> "123"

p "123"[0..3]    # ==> "123"

p "123"[/^.{4}/] # ==> nil

p "123"[/^.{0,4}/] # ==> "123"