From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2003-06-11T17:49:58+09:00
Subject: Re: OT: Regexp question


"Dominik Werder" <dwerder@gmx.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:oprqkm3tw5jh6mnk@mail.gmx.net...
> > file.gets =~ /([\w\s]+)/
> > puts $1
> thanks! also great working :)

This one matches too much white space:

irb(main):001:0> a = [ "Illinois (3762)", "Indiana", "Iowa (64)",
"Kansas", "Kentucky (2675)", "New York (2348)" ]
["Illinois (3762)", "Indiana", "Iowa (64)", "Kansas", "Kentucky (2675)",
"New York (2348)"]
irb(main):002:0>
irb(main):003:0* a.map do |x|
irb(main):004:1*   /([\w\s]+)/.match( x )[ 0 ]
irb(main):005:1> end
["Illinois ", "Indiana", "Iowa ", "Kansas", "Kentucky ", "New York "]
irb(main):006:0>
irb(main):007:0* a.map do |x|
irb(main):008:1*   /\b([\w\s]+)\b/.match( x )[ 0 ]
irb(main):009:1> end
["Illinois", "Indiana", "Iowa", "Kansas", "Kentucky", "New York"]
irb(main):010:0>

\b matches word boundaries and thus does prevent matching white space at
the end of the name.

Cheers

    robert