Convert a string to regular expression ruby
I need to convert string like "/[\w\s]+/" to regular expression.
"/[\w\s]+/" => /[\w\s]+/
I tried using different Regexp
methods like:
Regexp.new("/[\w\s]+/") => /\/[w ]+\//
, similarly Regexp.compile
and Regexp.escape
. But none of them returns as I expected.
Further more I tried removing backslashes:
Regexp.new("[\w\s]+") => /[w ]+/
But not have a luck.
Then I tried to do it simple:
str = "[\w\s]+"
=> "[w ]+"
It escapes. Now how could string remains as it is and convert to a regexp object?
Looks like here you need the initial string to be in single quotes (refer this page)
>> str = '[\w\s]+'
=> "[\\w\\s]+"
>> Regexp.new str
=> /[\w\s]+/
To be clear
/#{Regexp.quote(your_string_variable)}/
is working too
edit: wrapped your_string_variable in Regexp.quote, for correctness.
This method will safely escape all characters with special meaning:
/#{Regexp.quote(your_string)}/
For example, .
will be escaped, since it's otherwise interpreted as 'any character'.
Remember to use a single-quoted string unless you want regular string interpolation to kick in, where backslash has a special meaning.
Using % notation:
%r{\w+}m => /\w+/m
or
regex_string = '\W+'
%r[#{regex_string}]
From help:
%r[ ] Interpolated Regexp (flags can appear after the closing delimiter)