Get substring after the first = symbol in Ruby

Question

Purely out of curiosity, is there a more elegant way to simply get the substring after the first = symbol in a string? The following works to give back name=b

Answer 1

Use String#match

You can use a regular expression with positive lookbehind to find your match. For example:

string = "option=name=bob"
string.match /(?<==).*/
# => #<MatchData "name=bob">

Use Match Variables to Access Result

Even if you haven't assigned the match data to a variable, Ruby will store it in special match variables for you.

$&
# => "name=bob"

Answer 2

split(char) is another function which can be used. For instance, we want to get substring before char ':' from "answer:computer" then, we can use "answer:computer".split(':')[0].So, we would get result as "answer".

Answer 3

Not exactly .after, but quite close to:

string.partition('=').last

http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/String.html#method-i-partition

Answer 4

There's also this way:

string.partition('=')[2]

And this one:

string.sub(/.*?=/, '')

I think I prefer the regexp way you mentioned, though.

Answer 5

Probably not the Ruby-way (it's a bit cryptic), but you could do this:

string[/=/]
$'
=> "name=bob"

or

/=/ =~ string
$'
=> "name=bob"

$' is a global holding the string after a successful match. It's nil if nothing is matched, too!