Question

In Ruby, I want to have a regex match either of two expressions with a single group in the result. I want the following results:

regex = /you tell me/
regex.match(%|My name is "Peter"|)[1]
=> "Peter"
regex.match(%|My name is 'Peter'|)[1]
=> "Peter"

Note that I want the 1st group to refer to just Peter with no quotes, and I want there to be exactly one group matched in either case. Just as an example, this would match the first case (only):

/^My name is "([^"]*)"$/

I’d like something similar to that. I happen to be using this for cucumber testing.

Answer 1

This regex might work for you

['"](\w+)['"]

It matches exactly one group. But it also allows unbalanced quotes, like 'Peter"

If you want to match only balanced quotes, then you can’t do it with a single group (I’m afraid).

Anyhow, here’s my take:

('|")(\w+)\1

It matches two groups and “Peter” is in the second one.