From: RvB <rvb@...>
Date: 2003-08-21T03:37:08+09:00
Subject: Re: What attracts me to Ruby

On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 03:02:22AM +0900, Matt Lawrence wrote:
> I've often wondered if there was a good alternative to using $1, $2, $3, 
> etc. to pull stuff out of a string that has been matched with a regular 
> expression.  Ideas?

yes. the match method returns a MatchData object which stores this
information, as well as the text before, and the text after the match.
An example from the pickaxe book:

m = /(.)(.)(\d+)(\d)/.match("THX1138.")
m[0] 	� 	"HX1138"
m[1, 2] 	� 	["H", "X"]
m[1..3] 	� 	["H", "X", "113"]
m[-3, 2] 	� 	["X", "113"]

other methods of the MatchData object are post_match, pre_match, length,
etc ... you could see the book itself for details :)
(http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ref_c_matchdata.html) ...

but how do you get around the other dollar-variables? like $<, , $_ and
$! ... i really hate global variables ... i think they are unelegant. is
there an object oriented way to access them?

bye
	RvB (Rene van Bevern) <rvb@rvb.dyndns.org>