End of Life Ruby 3.0 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →
instance method
String#scan
str.scan(pattern) → array
str.scan(pattern) {|match, ...| block } → str
string.c
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static VALUE
rb_str_scan(VALUE str, VALUE pat)
{
VALUE result;
long start = 0;
long last = -1, prev = 0;
char *p = RSTRING_PTR(str); long len = RSTRING_LEN(str);
pat = get_pat_quoted(pat, 1);
mustnot_broken(str);
if (!rb_block_given_p()) {
VALUE ary = rb_ary_new();
while (!NIL_P(result = scan_once(str, pat, &start, 0))) {
last = prev;
prev = start;
rb_ary_push(ary, result);
}
if (last >= 0) rb_pat_search(pat, str, last, 1);
else rb_backref_set(Qnil);
return ary;
}
while (!NIL_P(result = scan_once(str, pat, &start, 1))) {
last = prev;
prev = start;
rb_yield(result);
str_mod_check(str, p, len);
}
if (last >= 0) rb_pat_search(pat, str, last, 1);
return str;
}
Both forms iterate through str, matching the pattern (which may be a Regexp or a String). For each match, a result is generated and either added to the result array or passed to the block. If the pattern contains no groups, each individual result consists of the matched string, $&. If the pattern contains groups, each individual result is itself an array containing one entry per group.
Example
a = "cruel world" a.scan(/\w+/) #=> ["cruel", "world"] a.scan(/.../) #=> ["cru", "el ", "wor"] a.scan(/(...)/) #=> [["cru"], ["el "], ["wor"]] a.scan(/(..)(..)/) #=> [["cr", "ue"], ["l ", "wo"]]
And the block form:
Example
a.scan(/\w+/) {|w| print "<<#{w}>> " } print "\n" a.scan(/(.)(.)/) {|x,y| print y, x } print "\n"
produces:
<<cruel>> <<world>> rceu lowlr