From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2004-01-31T07:38:31+09:00
Subject: Re: principle of most suprise

Dave Lee wrote:
> tony summerfelt wrote:
> 
>>gah, ruby is doing it to me again:
>>
>> logline=String.new("+ 30 Jan 12:20:09 [3988] addr: x.x.x.x")
>> tda=Array[(logline.split(/\[\d+\]/))]
>> tda.first
> 
> 
> another way of writing this code, which you may find more explicit if you
> only use tda.first is to use MatchData#pre_match
> 
> logline = "+ 30 Jan 12:20:09 [3988] addr: x.x.x.x"
> marker = /\[\d+\]/
> marker.match(logline).pre_match # equivalent to tda.first from above

Or using the lookahead contruct, ?=, you can do this:

logline = "+ 30 Jan 12:20:09 [3988] addr: x.x.x.x"
logline[/^.*(?=\[\d+\])/]