[ruby-talk:6098] Regex question -- new("") vs. //

Hello all...

Why are these three patterns below not the same?
Output I get is:
yes 1
no 2
yes 3

And I know the pattern is ugly... I've been playing with
it a lot to try to get it to include/exclude all the cases
I want...

Thanks,
Hal


float1 = Regexp.new("^(\d[\d_]*)*\.[\d_]*")
float2 = /^(\d[\d_]*)*\.[\d_]*/
float3 = Regexp.new("^(\\d[\\d_]*)*\.[\\d_]*")

test = "_123.45"

if test =~ float1
  puts "yes 1"
else
  puts "no 1"
end

if test =~ float2
  puts "yes 2"
else
  puts "no 2"
end

if test =~ float3
  puts "yes 3"
else
  puts "no 3"
end