CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyregex
Jacob Williams
Jacob Williams

Reputation: 1

Ruby scan with optional match matches, returns nil except for optional

I'm running the following to catch a series of numerical values (floats and integers) in a string:

Example:

x = "This is the 1st string with 2 quotes and took 3.4 seconds to write."

Running

x.scan(/\d+(\.\d+)?/)

returns

[[nil], [nil], [".4"]]

but I'm looking for

[["1"], ["2"], ["3.4"]]

What am I doing wrong here? Or is there a better way to approach this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 216

Answers (1)

Silvio Mayolo
Silvio Mayolo

Reputation: 70297

From the Ruby docs:

If the pattern contains no groups, each individual result consists of the matched string, $&. If the pattern contains groups, each individual result is itself an array containing one entry per group.

Since your pattern contains a capture group, you're getting the latter behavior. Making the group non-capturing gives you what you want.

x.scan(/\d+(?:\.\d+)?/)

Upvotes: 1

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