End of Life Ruby 3.1 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →

instance method

Regexp#match

rxp.match(str, pos=0) → matchdata or nil

rxp.match(str, pos=0) {|match| block } → obj

static VALUE
rb_reg_match_m(int argc, VALUE *argv, VALUE re)
{
    VALUE result = Qnil, str, initpos;
    long pos;

    if (rb_scan_args(argc, argv, "11", &str, &initpos) == 2) {
        pos = NUM2LONG(initpos);
    }
    else {
        pos = 0;
    }

    pos = reg_match_pos(re, &str, pos, &result);
    if (pos < 0) {
        rb_backref_set(Qnil);
        return Qnil;
    }
    rb_match_busy(result);
    if (!NIL_P(result) && rb_block_given_p()) {
        return rb_yield(result);
    }
    return result;
}

Returns a MatchData object describing the match, or nil if there was no match. This is equivalent to retrieving the value of the special variable $~ following a normal match. If the second parameter is present, it specifies the position in the string to begin the search.

Example

/(.)(.)(.)/.match("abc")[2]   #=> "b"
/(.)(.)/.match("abc", 1)[2]   #=> "c"

If a block is given, invoke the block with MatchData if match succeed, so that you can write

Example

/M(.*)/.match("Matz") do |m|
  puts m[0]
  puts m[1]
end

instead of

Example

if m = /M(.*)/.match("Matz")
  puts m[0]
  puts m[1]
end

The return value is a value from block execution in this case.

See also #match? #inspect #hash #named_captures also in 4.1 · 4.0 · 3.4 · 3.3 · 3.2 · 3.0

‹ prev#inspect next ›#match?