From: Mark Wilson <mwilson13@...>
Date: 2003-09-15T23:07:50+09:00
Subject: Re: String#start_with? / #end_with?


On Monday, September 15, 2003, at 05:26 AM, Robert Klemme wrote:

>
> "Mark Wilson" <mwilson13@cox.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:319AF784-E56A-11D7-BBD2-000393876156@cox.net...
>>
>> On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 05:20 PM, Philip Mak wrote:
>>
>>> [snip]
>>
>> class String
>>
>>    def start_with?(little_string)
>>      !self.match(/^#{Regexp.escape(little_string)}/).nil?
>>    end
>
> Would you care to explain why you test for nil?  Why not:
>
>    def start_with?(little_string)
>      match(/^#{Regexp.escape(little_string)}/)
>    end
>
> or even
>
>    def start_with?(little_string)
>      little_string.empty? || match(/^#{Regexp.escape(little_string)}/)
>    end
> [snip]

Totally mundane reasons -- I was extending Ryan Pavlik's initial 
suggestion in light of Philip Mak's further question. I chose to test 
for nil? so that the method returned true or false. Incidentally, I 
like Gavin Sinclair's alternate version on the RubyGardenWiki for 
character matching as opposed to Regexp matching plus escaping Regexp 
special characters.

Regards,

Mark