Question

I have a String my_string :

[...]
THE_PREFIX value1 THE_SUFFIX
THE_PREFIX value2 THE_SUFFIX
[...]

And I want to get each value ( value1, value2, …). I tried

my_string.scan(/THE_PREFIX (.*) THE_SUFFIX/m)

but it returns only one String :

value1 THE_SUFFIX THE_PREFIX value2

How could I do that ?

EDIT

Each value contains a lot of special chars. I don’t want to do the regexp that match with this

Answer 1

Use reluctant regex quantifier:

irb(main):001:0> a = "THE_PREFIX value1 THE_SUFFIX
irb(main):002:0" THE_PREFIX value2 THE_SUFFIX"
=> "THE_PREFIX value1 THE_SUFFIX\nTHE_PREFIX value2 THE_SUFFIX"
irb(main):003:0> a.scan(/THE_PREFIX (.*) THE_SUFFIX/m)
=> [["value1 THE_SUFFIX\nTHE_PREFIX value2"]]
irb(main):004:0> a.scan(/THE_PREFIX (.*?) THE_SUFFIX/m)
=> [["value1"], ["value2"]]