From: Jonas Bengtsson <caelumse@...>
Date: 2002-07-04T02:47:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Regular Expression problems

Hello again,

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I'm a Ruby-newbie. So I am would
appreciate any comments on my programming style. I have not had the
time to read Programming Ruby yet (besides as a reference) thus I'm
not too familiar with the Ruby-way.

By the way, I really like what I've seen about Ruby so far!

-- 
Best regards,
 Jonas

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything. 
 Thomas A. Edison


Wednesday, July 03, 2002, 7:25:01 PM, you wrote:

> Hello,

> I got a problem with regular expressions in Ruby. The closest I have
> come to a solution looks like this:

> _________________________________________________________________
> re = /<name: ([a-zA-Z_]+)>\n(.*)(<name:.*)?/m
> unprocessed = <<HERE
> <name: a_name>
> a little content
> containing all sorts of
> characters, even < and >
> <name: another_name>
> also containing all sorts
> of things
> <name: third_name>
> i don't know in advance how
> many of these there are but
> i settle with three here
> HERE

> match = re.match unprocessed

> while match
>         name = match[1]
>         content = match[2]
>         unprocessed = match[3]

>         puts "MATCH", "name:#{name}", "content:#{content}",
>                 "unproc:#{unprocessed}"

>         match = re.match unprocessed
> end
> _________________________________________________________________
> Here is the output:
> _________________________________________________________________
> MATCH
> name:a_name
> content:a little content
> containing all sorts of
> characters, even < and >
> <name: another_name>
> also containing all sorts
> of things
> <name: third_name>
> i don't know in advance how
> many of these there are but
> i settle with three here
> _________________________________________________________________
> But I want the output to look like this:
> _________________________________________________________________
> MATCH
> name:a_name
> content:a little content
> containing all sorts of
> characters, even < and >
> name:another_name
> content:also containing all sorts
> of things
> name:third_name
> content:i don't know in advance how
> many of these there are but
> i settle with three here
> _________________________________________________________________


> So the problem is that the second group--(.*)--is too 'hungry' and
> doesn't stop on the first occurrence of the third group--(<name:.*).

> Is it possible to change this behavior of the second group? Or are
> there any better ways to solve this problem?