Regexp in Ruby does not give the expected result

Question

I have some strings like 2015 - THIS Test and 2015 - THAT Test.

I want to have the part THIS Test or THAT Test so I tried this:

"2015 - THIS Test"[/((THIS|THAT)\s\.*)/]

But that only gives me THIS or THAT.

Why does it cut the rest?
How to get the desired substring correctly?

I don't want to rely on just cutting the first 7 characters.

Oh wow... I was searching for like one hour, thank you! Make this an answer — SimonH
– SimonH, Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 13:00
I have :) This is exactly the opposite to what mistakes people usually make: they usually forget to escape a special metacharacter. This time, it is vice versa. — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 13:03
I suggest using Rubular next time, as it also has a guide on how to use regex in Ruby — user3373470
– user3373470, Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 16:55
Thanks for that advice but I did indeed use Rubular. It worked there because I didn't escape the dot, but it seems like I somehow failed at copying it to my script... — SimonH
– SimonH, Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 22:47

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-19 13:01:02Z

3

You escaped the dot and it lost the meaning of any character but a newline and started to denote a literal . symbol. \.* matches zero or more literal dots.

Remove the \:

puts "2015 - THIS Test"[/((THIS|THAT)\s.*)/]
puts "2015 - THAT Test"[/((THIS|THAT)\s.*)/]

Result (see demo):

THIS Test
THAT Test

answered Jan 19, 2016 at 13:01

Wiktor Stribiżew

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