Ruby: Working with regex capture groups
Like most Ruby / Rails developers, I use Regular Expressions a lot in my work. When doing so I often forget the different options I have for getting regex capture groups into variables. So here are the best ones:
Using match - easy, but only returns a single captured group
This method excels in its simplicity. Another benefit is the .captures method of accessing the capture groups. With this and the safety operator (&.) we can easily handle the case where no match is found.
"a ab1 ab2".match(/(ab[0-9])/)&.captures
# => ["ab1"]
Using scan - returns all matched groups as an array
I tend to prefer match to scan mostly out of habit, but scan offers two good benefits:
- Returns all capture groups, whereas
matchreturns only one - The ability to immediately assign captures to variables
"a ab1 ab2".scan(/(ab[0-9])/)
# => [["ab1"], ["ab2"]]
To also assign the capture groups immediately, use an array assignment:
a, b = "a ab1 ab2".scan(/(ab[0-9])/)
# => [["ab1"], ["ab2"]]
# irb(main):005:0> a
# => ["ab1"]
# irb(main):006:0> b
# => ["ab2"]
Using =~ operator with named captures (I rarely use this one)
This is mostly useful when you have a string where you know exactly what parts you want to match. I tend to avoid this one. I dislike that the variable names are a part of the regex. I tend to find regexes complicated enough as they are. I do not need to add more complexity just to assign variables.
That said, for large regexes with mane captures, this method can be quite handy.
/a (?<a1>ab[0-9]) (?<a2>ab[0-9])/ =~ "a ab1 ab2"
# => 0
# irb(main):010:0> a1
# => "ab1"
# irb(main):011:0> a2
# => "ab2"
Recommendation: Rubular
I would like to give a big shout-out to Rubular, a Ruby regular expression editor and tester.
This little tool has been around since at least 2013, always works, and is amazingly simple to use. Also no ads. None.
Whenever I cannot remember eg. what the shortcode is for “Any non-whitespace character” I open Rubular. Thank you Michael Lovitt @lovitt.