Question

I’m trying to pass in a string from one function to another to be parsed as a regular expression.

Currently, when I do

@match = run_rule({ "subjectline" => "What is the weather like in Mumbai?", "rule" => "[w|W]hat is the weather( like)? in ([^?]+)?"})

The answer is what I want (matching individual sections of the regular expression).

When I do

@match = run_rule({ "subjectline" => "What is the weather like in Mumbai?", "rule" => rule['rule']['rule']})

where rule is returned from YAML

---
rule:
  rule: "[w|W]hat is the weather( like)? in ([^?]+)?"

puts returns exactly the same thing at the console for

puts rule['rule']['rule']
puts "[w|W]hat is the weather( like)? in ([^?]+)?"

What’s going on?

Answer 1

Works perfectly for me, see:

irb(main):079:0> yaml = <<EOI
irb(main):080:0" ---
irb(main):081:0" rule:
irb(main):082:0"   rule: "[w|W]hat is the weather( like)? in ([^?]+)?"
irb(main):083:0" EOI
=> "---\nrule:\n  rule: \"[w|W]hat is the weather( like)? in ([^?]+)?\"\n"
irb(main):084:0> rule = YAML.load(yaml)
=> {"rule"=>{"rule"=>"[w|W]hat is the weather( like)? in ([^?]+)?"}}
irb(main):085:0> args = { "subjectline" => "What is the weather like in Mumbai?", "rule" => rule['rule']['rule']}
=> {"subjectline"=>"What is the weather like in Mumbai?", "rule"=>"[w|W]hat is the weather( like)? in ([^?]+)?"}
irb(main):086:0> args['subjectline'].match args['rule']
=> #<MatchData "What is the weather like in Mumbai" 1:" like" 2:"Mumbai">

Something else is going on that you’re not showing us.