Question

I’ve got this little thing here:

def get_articles
  @articles = []
  Doc.column_names.each do |a|
    if a.match(/^article/)
      @articles << a
    end
  end
end

But it returns a lot of unwanted results. How would I go about discarding results it returns that end in a specific string (say, _body)?

Cheers!

Answer 1

How about:

if a.match(/^article/) and !a.match(/_body$/)

Incidentally, your method can be rewritten (more compactly) as:

def get_articles
  @articles = Doc.column_names.select { |a| a.match(/^article/) && !a.match(/_body$/) }
end

You can also replace the dual match with a single match containing a zero-width negative look-behind assertion, but it is less readable for the majority of people (though about 2x as fast in a quick-and-dirty test):

def get_articles
  @articles = Doc.column_names.select { |a| a.match(/^article.*(?<!_body)$/) }
end