From: Daniel Carrera <dcarrera@...>
Date: 2003-01-12T10:19:05+09:00
Subject: Re: a smart way...

Hi Daniel,

The brackets () in a regular expression cause Ruby to "remember" the
matches.  The first match is stored in $1, the second in $2 and so on.

line = '<file name="daniel">'
line =~ /file( +)name( *)=( *"(.+)")( *)/
              ^       ^    ^    ^    ^
             $1       $2   $3   $4   $5

In this case, you are interested in $4

Example:

$ irb --simple-prompt
>> line = '<file name="daniel">'
>> line =~ /file( +)name( *)=( *"(.+)")( *)/
>> $4
"daniel"

Cheers,
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant.  Math Dept.
University of Maryland.  (301) 405-5137