Question

Are we suppose to use regex with for loop?
For example If I want to ensure the user entering bunch of email in a text-box in the format like below, What is the best way to do it ?

Zoo bbb <[e-mail]>, Alan T <[e-mail]>, ........

How do we extract the information and put in names[], emails[].?

Answer 1

If you wanted to use regex the following pattern would match:

<([\w+\.\@]+)>+


Match 1
1.  [e-mail]
Match 2
1.  [e-mail]

You can test it out on: http://rubular.com

What you would do is count the matches found by using scan

here is the example code i put together

s = "Zoo bbb <[e-mail]>, Alan T <[e-mail]>"

names = []
emails = []

s.scan(/[\s]?([\w\s]+)<([\w+\.\@]+)>+/).each do | m |
  names << m[0]
  emails << m[1]
end

puts "names = #{names}"
puts "emails = #{emails}"

output:

names = ["Zoo bbb ", "Alan T "]
emails = ["[e-mail]", "[e-mail]"]