Problem with Regular Expression

[Mario Ruiz]

I'm replacing a string using:
xmlString.gsub!(/:#{tagName}>#{oldValue}<\//i,":" + tagName + ">" +
value + "</")

It works perfectly but... if oldValue contains the character +, it
doesn't work.

Do you know how to solve this?

Thanks a lot...

 

[F. Senault]

Le 19 mai à 18:54, Mario Ruiz a écrit :

I'm replacing a string using:
xmlString.gsub!(/:#{tagName}>#{oldValue}<\//i,":" + tagName + ">" +
value + "</")

It works perfectly but... if oldValue contains the character +, it
doesn't work.

Do you know how to solve this?

When you interpolate strings into a regexp, the special chars are taken
as part of the regexp (meaning your '+' means one or more of the
expression before). If you want to match literals, use Regexp.escape :

xmlString.gsub!(/:#{Regexp.escape(tagName)}>#{Regexp.escape(oldValue)}<\//i
....

Regexp.escape("abc+") => "abc\\+"
Regexp.escape("abc[]+")

=> "abc\\[\\]\\+"

Fred

 

[Mario Ruiz]

Le 19 mai � 18:54, Mario Ruiz a �crit :

Yep It works!!!

Thank you very much.

 

[Mark Thomas]

I'm replacing a string using:
xmlString.gsub!(/:#{tagName}>#{oldValue}<\//i,":" + tagName + ">" +
value + "</")

In general, it's not a good idea to parse XML with regular
expressions. They tend to be more fragile. What happens if there is an
attribute on the tag? Extra spaces around the brackets? The expression
breaks.

If you want something more robust, use an XML parser. As a bonus, your
code will also be more readable.

doc = Nokogiri::XML(xmlString)
doc.xpath("//mytag").each do |tag|
tag.content = value
end

-- Mark

(I'm surprised Aaron didn't respond with such an example!)