Regexp grouping question

[petermichaux]

Hi

I'm trying to remove unecessary white space around equals signs and
after semicolons

compressed = "foo = bar; red = herring;"
compressed = compressed.gsub(/\s*([=;])\s*/,"#$1")
puts compressed

produces
foobarredherring

but I would like it to produce
foo=bar;red=herring;

Seems like the #$1 is not working. I also tried #{$1} but that didn't
work either.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Chris Alfeld]

compressed =3D "foo =3D bar; red =3D herring;"
compressed =3D compressed.gsub(/\s*([=3D;])\s*/,'\1')

I believe #$1 is evalued *before* gsub is executed and hence fails.=20
gsub sets the variable and uses \1, \2, \3 in the replacement string
to correspond.

 

[petermichaux]

compressed = "foo = bar; red = herring;"
compressed = compressed.gsub(/\s*([=;])\s*/,'\1')

I believe #$1 is evalued *before* gsub is executed and hence fails.
gsub sets the variable and uses \1, \2, \3 in the replacement string
to correspond.

Thank you!

Peter

 

[Logan Capaldo]

compressed = "foo = bar; red = herring;"
compressed = compressed.gsub(/\s*([=;])\s*/,'\1')

I believe #$1 is evalued *before* gsub is executed and hence fails.
gsub sets the variable and uses \1, \2, \3 in the replacement string
to correspond.

Thank you!

Peter

If you want to use $1, $2, $3, etc. with gsub, you can use the block
form:

compressed.gsub(regexp) { |matched_string| $1 }

 

[David Drub]

Hi

I'm trying to remove unecessary white space around equals signs and
after semicolons

compressed = "foo = bar; red = herring;"
compressed = compressed.gsub(/\s*([=;])\s*/,"#$1")
puts compressed

produces
foobarredherring

but I would like it to produce
foo=bar;red=herring;

Seems like the #$1 is not working. I also tried #{$1} but that didn't
work either.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Peter

This thread has been *very helpful*. Thank you!

What if the input syntax allows spaces in the field values?

Possible input:
foo = high bar jump ; red = pickled herring ;

And, let's remove leading and trailing white space.

Desired results:
foo=high bar jump;red=pickled herring;