Question

I have a regular expression which has multiple matches. I figured out that $1 , $2 etc .. can be used to access the matched groups. But how to access the multiple occurences of the same matched group ?

Please take a look at the rubular page below.

http://rubular.com/r/nqHP1qAqRY

So now $1 gives 916 and $2 gives NIL. How can i access the 229885 ? Is there something similar to $1[1] or so ?

Answer 1

To expand on my comment and respond to your question:

If you want to store the values in an array, modify the block and collect instead of iterate:

> arr = xml.grep(/<DATA size="(\d+)"/).collect { |d| d.match /\d+/ }
> arr.each { |a| puts "==> #{a}" }
==> 916
==> 229885

The |d| is normal Ruby block parameter syntax; each d is the matching string, from which the number is extracted. It’s not the cleanest Ruby, although it’s functional.

I still recommend using a parser; note that the rexml version would be this (more or less):

require 'rexml/document'
include REXML
doc = Document.new xml
arr = doc.elements.collect("//DATA") { |d| d.attributes["size"] }
arr.each { |a| puts "==> #{a}" }

Once your “XML” is converted to actual XML you can get even more useful data:

doc = Document.new xml
arr = doc.elements.collect("//file") do |f|
  name = f.elements["FILENAME"].attributes["path"]
  size = f.elements["DATA"].attributes["size"]
  [name, size]
end

arr.each { |a| puts "#{a[0]}\t#{a[1]}" }

~/Users/1.txt   916
~/Users/2.txt   229885