Regex query

[Manoj P M]

Hi,

A Simple question on regular expression in ruby. Some can make me
understand the below code snippets. I was under the impression that
both these statement would give the same answer. But it doesnt. Why ?

irb(main):001:0> 'banana' =~ /(an)*/
=> 0
irb(main):002:0> 'banana' =~ /(an)+/
=> 1

-Manjo

 

[Luis Parravicini]

A Simple question on regular expression in ruby. Some can make me
understand the below code snippets. I was under the impression that
both these statement would give the same answer. But it doesnt. Why ?

irb(main):001:0> 'banana' =~ /(an)*/
=> 0

In this case you are looking for '', 'an', 'anan', 'ananan' and so on.
So it matches at the beginning of the string (index 0) with the empty
string.


Luis