From: Mike Stok <mike@...>
Date: 2002-12-20T10:58:16+09:00
Subject: Re: regex help please please !

In article <AFB901DF1A6CD411A3AD00D0B781F8E5049CA1B0@wmelntms01.au.wmmercer.com>, Matthew, Graeme wrote:

> Please could someone assist as im now bald with a pile of hair around my
> chair !

> How does one do greedy regex's in ruby ? in Perl / Python one has access to
> the /s or .DOTALL option but in ruby I cannot get a greedy effect.

By "greedy" I assume you mean make the . metacharacter match anything 
including a new line. (Normally greed in regexps is used in the context
of how much of the string is "consumed" by quantified atoms, but I'm
guessing from the context.)

Do you want the m modifier? e.g. (in irb)

irb(main):001:0> languages = "ruby\nperl\npython"
=> "ruby\nperl\npython"
irb(main):002:0> languages =~ /(r.*y)/ && $1
=> "ruby"
irb(main):003:0> languages =~ /(r.*y)/m && $1
=> "ruby\nperl\npy"

or if pythonesque verbosity is what you're after 

irb(main):004:0> Regexp.new('(r.*y)', Regexp::MULTILINE).match(languages)[1]
=> "ruby\nperl\npy"

Hope this helps,

Mike

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