使用正则表达式将字符串拆分为单词

Question

I need some help making sense of the following Ruby code for splitting a sentence into words.

class String
  def words
    scan(/\w[\w\'\-]*/)
  end
end

Here is the method in action:

"This is a test of words' capabilities".words

returns

["This", "is", "a", "test", "of", "words'", "capabilities"]

What does the regular expression (/\\w[\\w\\'-]*/) mean exactly?

Answer 1

Basically that translates to:

/ : indicates start of regular expression
\\w : Find me a word character (typically [A-Za-z0-9_])
[\\w\\'-]* : then find me zero or more word characters, apostrophes, or dashes
/ : indicates end of regular expression

The Ruby code is finding every match for that expression (any unbroken series of word characters that can contain apostrophes and dashes but can't start with them), and storing that into an array as it finds it.

Answer 2

I'm sure you can find the Regular expressions document. A useful resource to answer your question and learn more about it in general!