Return first match of Ruby regex

ruby regex string
Daniel Beardsley picture Daniel Beardsley · Feb 6, 2009 · Viewed 74.9k times · Source

I'm looking for a way to perform a regex match on a string in Ruby and have it short-circuit on the first match.

The string I'm processing is long and from what it looks like the standard way (match method) would process the whole thing, collect each match, and return a MatchData object containing all matches.

match = string.match(/regex/)[0].to_s

Answer

Presidenten picture Presidenten · Feb 6, 2009

You could try variableName[/regular expression/]. This is an example output from irb:

irb(main):003:0> names = "erik kalle johan anders erik kalle johan anders"
=> "erik kalle johan anders erik kalle johan anders"
irb(main):004:0> names[/kalle/]
=> "kalle"

Related questions

Extract a substring from a string in Ruby using a regular expression

How can I extract a substring from within a string in Ruby? Example: String1 = "<name> <substring>" I want to extract substring from String1 (i.e. everything within the last occurrence of < and >).

Read More
Convert a string to regular expression ruby

I need to convert string like "/[\w\s]+/" to regular expression. "/[\w\s]+/" => /[\w\s]+/ I tried using different Regexp methods like: Regexp.new("/[\w\s]+/") => /\/[w ]+\//, similarly Regexp.compile and Regexp.escape. But none of them returns …

Read More
Regex / Remove slash from string in ruby

Thanks in advance... I am having some trouble with regular expressions in ruby, or otherwise finding a way to remove a slash from a string. Here is how my string looks: string = "word \/ word" I am trying to remove both …

Read More