Regex with named capture groups getting all matches in Ruby

Question

I have a string:

s=\"123--abc,123--abc,123--abc\"

I tried using Ruby 1.9\'s new feature \"named groups\" to fetch all named group info:

Answer 1

I really liked @Umut-Utkan's solution, but it didn't quite do what I wanted so I rewrote it a bit (note, the below might not be beautiful code, but it seems to work)

class String
  def scan2(regexp)
    names = regexp.names
    captures = Hash.new
    scan(regexp).collect do |match|
      nzip = names.zip(match)
      nzip.each do |m|
        captgrp = m[0].to_sym
        captures.add(captgrp, m[1])
      end
    end
    return captures
  end
end

Now, if you do

p '12f3g4g5h5h6j7j7j'.scan2(/(?[a-zA-Z])(?[0-9])/)

You get

{:alpha=>["f", "g", "g", "h", "h", "j", "j"], :digit=>["3", "4", "5", "5", "6", "7", "7"]}

(ie. all the alpha characters found in one array, and all the digits found in another array). Depending on your purpose for scanning, this might be useful. Anyway, I love seeing examples of how easy it is to rewrite or extend core Ruby functionality with just a few lines!