From: Ruby Baby <ruby@...>
Date: 2004-01-11T05:57:17+09:00
Subject: regex to NOT match?

Sorry it seems like the smallest thing, but I'm stuck on this.

I'm trying to make a simple regex to strip away characters that are NOT certain characters I name.
I'm unclear on what Ruby uses as a "NOT" match in regex, like ! is for !=
(Or if it uses the ^, where does it put it?)

EXAMPLE:

myString = 'I want only the letters a and t and period.  When done it should look like atttaatta.tatttaatta..'

# this doesn't work of course:
puts myString.gsub(!/at\./, '')

Can someone show me where to find the rule on this?
I couldn't find it in any documentation, or Ruby Way or Programming Ruby books.

Thanks!