From: Daniel Berger <djberge@...>
Date: 2003-04-17T07:41:10+09:00
Subject: Re: regular expressions

"Hal E. Fulton" wrote:
<snip>
> 
> But there is a complexity threshold where I would
> rather have a more verbose, readable, multi-line
> notation.

FWIW, there's always the /x option:

phoneregex = /
   ^        # Beginning of string
   \d{3,}   # starts with three digits
   \-*      # ...followed by an optional dash
   \d{3,}   # ...followed by three more digits
   \-*      # ...followed by an optional dash
   \d{4,}   # ...follwed by four digits
   $        # end of string
/x

phone1 = "303-555-1212"
phone2 = "3035551212"
phone3 = "abc123xyz"

if phoneregex.match(phone1)
   puts "Yes! #{phone1}"
else
   puts "No! #{phone1}"
end

if phoneregex.match(phone2)
   puts "Yes! #{phone2}"
else
   puts "No! #{phone2}"
end

if phoneregex.match(phone3)
   puts "Yes! #{phone3}"
else
   puts "No! #{phone3}"
end

I realize that it's not really what you're talking about, but sometimes
I use this approach to help myself out mentally when tackling a complex
regex.  If nothing else, it's here in case there are folks who don't
know about extended mode.

Regards,

Dan

-- 
a = [74, 117, 115, 116, 32, 65, 110, 111, 116, 104, 101, 114, 32, 82]
a.push(117,98, 121, 32, 72, 97, 99, 107, 101, 114)
puts a.pack("C*")