From: gedb@... (Ged)
Date: 2004-02-09T07:04:09+09:00
Subject: Re: principle of most suprise

Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in message news:<401ADCE4.2000209@path.berkeley.edu>...
> 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[/^.*(?=\[\d+\])/]

Another alternative is:

 logline=String.new("+ 30 Jan 12:20:09 [3988] addr: x.x.x.x")
 tda, number,address=(logline.split(/\[|\]|(?:addr\:)/, 3))
 puts "Putting it all back together: #{tda} [#{number}] addr: #{address}"

The most surprising thing is that programming can be so easy.