How do I get the match data for all occurrences of a Ruby regular expression in a string?

Question

I need the MatchData for each occurrence of a regular expression in a string. This is different than the scan method suggested in Match All Occurrences of a Regex, since that only gives me an array of strings (I need the full MatchData, to get begin and end information, etc).

input = "abc12def34ghijklmno567pqrs" numbers = /\d+/  numbers.match input # #<MatchData "12"> (only the first match) input.scan numbers  # ["12", "34", "567"] (all matches, but only the strings) 

I suspect there is some method that I've overlooked. Suggestions?

Answer 1

You want

"abc12def34ghijklmno567pqrs".to_enum(:scan, /\d+/).map { Regexp.last_match } 

which gives you

[#<MatchData "12">, #<MatchData "34">, #<MatchData "567">]  

The "trick" is, as you see, to build an enumerator in order to get each last_match.

Answer 2

My current solution is to add an each_match method to Regexp:

class Regexp   def each_match(str)     start = 0     while matchdata = self.match(str, start)       yield matchdata       start = matchdata.end(0)     end   end end 

Now I can do:

numbers.each_match input do |match|   puts "Found #{match[0]} at #{match.begin(0)} until #{match.end(0)}" end 

Tell me there is a better way.