Ruby - remove pattern from string

Question

I have a string pattern that, as an example, looks like this:

WBA - Skinny Joe vs. Hefty Hal

I want to truncate the pattern "WBA - " from the string and return just "Skinny Joe vs. Hefty Hal".

Jon Gauthier · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-03 00:38:57Z

48

Assuming that the "WBA" spot will be a sequence of any letter or number, followed by a space, dash, and space:

str = "WBA - Skinny Joe vs. Hefty Hal"
str.sub /^\w+\s-\s/, ''

By the way — RegexPal is a great tool for testing regular expressions like these.

answered Aug 3, 2011 at 0:18

Jon Gauthier

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Comments

Joshua Pinter · Accepted Answer · 2022-10-04 18:07:11Z

17

If you need a more complex string replacement, you can look into writing a more sophisticated regular expression. Otherwise:

Keep it simple! If you only need to remove "WBA - " from the beginning of the string, use String#sub.

s = "WBA - Skinny Joe vs. Hefty Hal"
puts s.sub(/^WBA - /, '')
# => Skinny Joe vs. Hefty Hal

Joshua Pinter

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answered Aug 3, 2011 at 0:23

maček

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ProTip™: Use gsub if you want to replace ALL occurrences.

kyku · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-04 09:52:51Z

6

You can also remove the first occurrence of a pattern with the following snippet:

s[/^WBA - /] = ''

answered Aug 4, 2015 at 9:52

kyku

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