Find both pattern and position of multiple regex matches in Ruby

Question

This should be an easy question but I can't find anything about it.

Given a regular expression in Ruby, for every match I need to retrieve the matched patterns $1, $2, but I also need the matching position.

I know that the =~ operator gives me the position of the first match, while string.scan(/regex/) gives me all matching patterns. If possible I need to have both results in the same step.

Answer 1

MatchData

string.scan(regex) do
  $1           # Pattern at first position
  $2           # Pattern at second position
  $~.offset(1) # Starting and ending position of $1
  $~.offset(2) # Starting and ending position of $2
end

Answer 2

You can access match data within scan like this:

"abcdefghij".scan(/\w/) {p $~}