Why does this regular expression return incorrect values?

Question

Say I have a string as follows:

"auto: true; server: false;"

...and I want a regular expression to create a hash of these settings. I have the below code:

# class Configurer...
def spit(path = "", *args)
  spat = Hash.new
  if File.file?(path)
    # Parse file
  else
    args.each do |arg|
      begin
        if path.include? arg + ":"
          strip = path.match(/#{arg}:\s(.*);/)
          spat[arg] = strip[1]
        end
      rescue
        return "Error when parsing '#{arg}' in direct input."
      end
    end
  end
  spat
end

When something like:

config = Configurer.new
puts config.spit("auto: true; server: false;", "auto", "server")

...is ran, the output is an incorrect hash of:

# => {"auto"=>"true; server: false", "server"=>"false"}

Why is that? When I parse a file (line by line) and use the same regular expression I get the desired hash. Why is this not the case with this method?

Answer 1

Use a non-greedy repetition instead:

/#{arg}:\s(.*?);/