Not grab group match in Ruby Regex

Question

I am trying to break down the following string:

"@command Text1 @command2 Text2"

in Ruby. I want to take out "Text1" and "Text2" in an array. To do this I am using the scan method and using this:

text.scan(/@* (.*?)(@|$)/)

However, when run, the script is pulling the @ symbol in the middle as a separate match (presumably because the parenthesis are used in Ruby to indicate what string you want to pull out of the input):

Text1
@ 
Text2

My question is, how can I pull out Text1 and Text2 bearing in mind the expression needs to stop matching at both "@" and the end of a string?

Answer 1

If you want a non-capturing group use ?:

text.scan(/@* (.*?)(?:@|$)/)

As a sidenote, your regular expression looks like it might contain an error. Perhaps you meant this instead?

text.scan(/@\w+ (\w+)(?= @|$)/)

The difference is that your expression matches on " foo", which I guess is not intentional.

Answer 2

text.scan(/@* (.*?)(?:@|$)/)'

Answer 3

In your regex, you don't need the parentheses around '@|$'. The following will accomplish the same thing without the '@' being returned in a separate match group:

text.scan(/@* (.*?)[@\$]/)

Since you're looking only for a single character in that group, the square brackets will match any one character within them.

Answer 4

Here's how I'd do it:

text.scan(/@[^\s]* ([^@]*)/)

Answer 5

How does this regex look? http://rubular.com/regexes/13264