Ruby Regex match multiple times

Question

I want to find a search term in a given word. So we're speaking Regex.
The order of the letters is important, but I want to allow letters between each of the search term's letters.

An example: the german word seitenschneider contains the word seide in at least two ways:

word:    seitenschneider
match 1: xxx.........xx.
match 2: ......x...xxxx.

I want to find the result with the least possible letters, so in this case I'd go with match 2.
Is there a way to do this with regex?

I tried making the wildcards ungreedy but didn't receive the desired result:

"seitenschneider".scan(/s.*?e.*?i.*?d.*?e/)
=> ["seitenschneide"]

What I want to achieve is:

"seitenschneider".scan(magic_regex_thingy)
=> ["schneide"]

I'd also be happy with something like

"seitenschneider".scan(another_magic_regex_thingy)
=> ["seitenschneide", "schneide"]

cause I can find the shortest word in there by myself.

Any hints on how to get there?

sawa · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-27 11:24:50Z

4

For your second question:

"seitenschneider".scan(/(?=(s.*?e.*?i.*?d.*?e))/).flatten
# => ["seitenschneide", "schneide"]

Getting the shortest one using the regex above:

"seitenschneider".scan(/(?=(s.*?e.*?i.*?d.*?e))/).flatten.min_by(&:length)
# => "schneide"

answered Feb 27, 2014 at 11:24

sawa

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