From: Kevin Smith <sent@...>
Date: 2000-12-21T07:03:16+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7800] Re: Regex array subscripts

craig duncan <duncan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
>I'm just a Ruby-nuby and sparse documentation has me trying to construct
>my own (deeper) explanations for why things work the way they do.  wrt:
>
>"one 123 two"[/\d+/]   =>  "123"
>
>even more simply we have:
>
>"one 123 two"['e 1']   =>  "e 1"
>
>So, what is confusing is when the documentation says:
>
>"Arrays are ordered, integer-indexed collections of any object."
>
>It appears that an integer index is only one way of accessing array
>elements.  Which is what had me confused, because i was led to think
>that /\d/ and /\d+/ both return an (the same) integer.  But apparently
>they return the matched string, which works just fine as an array
>index.  Wierd.

I'm also a nuby, but here's my take: Just because 
you see [] doesn't mean you're looking at an 
array. something[whatever] might be accessing an 
item from an array, or from a hash, or a portion 
of a string. Basically, any class can define a [] 
operator and do whatever it wants with it.

So "string"[0] returns "s", and "string"['r'] 
returns 'r'. There are many other variations. If 
you don't have the PR book yet, I highly 
recommend it.

Kevin