Regex question

ruby-talk
1

I have a string = "this is text that I want to 9 9.90 89 9 ii8 u"

using str = string.gsub(/(?!\d)\b\s\b(?!\d)/,'-')

i get "this-is-text-that I want-to 9 9.90 89 9-ii8-u"
                                                    ^ ^

there problem is that I do not want the "-" to show up if the last char is a digit or the first chat is a digit. Got real close, but I think I need lookbehind which is not supported in ruby?

···

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Robert Keller
rlkeller@yahoo.com

2

Robert Keller wrote:

I have a string = "this is text that I want to 9 9.90 89 9 ii8 u"

using str = string.gsub(/(?!\d)\b\s\b(?!\d)/,'-')

i get "this-is-text-that I want-to 9 9.90 89 9-ii8-u"
                                                    ^ ^

there problem is that I do not want the "-" to show up if the last char
is a digit or the first chat is a digit. Got real close, but I think I
need lookbehind which is not supported in ruby?

Is this what you want:

    str.gsub(/([^0-9])\b\s\b([^0-9])/) { "#$1-#$2" }

-- Jim Weirich

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3

Jim Weirich wrote:

Is this what you want:

    str.gsub(/([^0-9])\b\s\b([^0-9])/) { "#$1-#$2" }

Or simply:

new_str = str.gsub(/([a-zA-Z]) ([a-zA-Z])/) {"#$1-#$2"}
puts new_str

--output:--
this-is-text-that I want-to 9 9.90 89 9 ii8 u

···

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4

7stud -- wrote:

Jim Weirich wrote:

Is this what you want:

    str.gsub(/([^0-9])\b\s\b([^0-9])/) { "#$1-#$2" }

Or simply:

new_str = str.gsub(/([a-zA-Z]) ([a-zA-Z])/) {"#$1-#$2"}
puts new_str

--output:--
this-is-text-that I want-to 9 9.90 89 9 ii8 u

You can also write it this way, which I think is even simpler since that
block might be a little confusing:

new_str = str.gsub(/([a-zA-Z]) ([a-zA-Z])/, '\1-\2')

···

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