Question

I am trying to break down the following string:

"@command Text1 @command2 Text2"

in Ruby. I want to take out “Text1” and “Text2” in an array. To do this I am using the scan method and using this:

text.scan(/@* (.*?)(@|$)/)

However, when run, the script is pulling the @ symbol in the middle as a separate match (presumably because the parenthesis are used in Ruby to indicate what string you want to pull out of the input):

Text1
@ 
Text2

My question is, how can I pull out Text1 and Text2 bearing in mind the expression needs to stop matching at both “@” and the end of a string?

Answer 1

If you want a non-capturing group use ?:

text.scan(/@* (.*?)(?:@|$)/)

As a sidenote, your regular expression looks like it might contain an error. Perhaps you meant this instead?

text.scan(/@\w+ (\w+)(?= @|$)/)

The difference is that your expression matches on " foo", which I guess is not intentional.