From: Pit Capitain <pit@...>
Date: 2002-09-20T17:01:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Thoughts on improving usage of Regexp#match

On 20 Sep 2002, at 9:47, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

> Please feel free to point out obvious things 
> that I'm not seeing here.
> 
> I was looking at a piece of code like this:
> 
>   sub1 = ""
>   if str =~ regex
>     sub1 = $1
>   end
> 
> and I thought three things:
>   1. I've never liked the $1 -- I usually avoid 
>      Perlish variables, even the common ones.
>   2. I don't like the if.
>   3. I don't like having to assign sub1 twice.
> 
> So I tried writing:
> 
>   sub1 = regex.match(str)[1] || ""
> 
> In theory this should be the same as the other
> four lines of code.
> 
> But it doesn't work because if the match
> fails, #match returns nil and I can't call
> [] on nil.
> 
> (code with special MatchData object skipped)

Hal,

have you thought of introducing a new or enhancing the current 
Regex#match method with two additional optional parameters (the 
index and a default value)? Usage like

>   sub1 = regex.new_match(str, 1, "")

(didn't find a good name)

Regards,
Pit