On Feb 9, 2005, at 2:10 PM, Jos Backus wrote: > Given Perl's > > $_ = "123 foo"; > > s/^(\d+)\s+//; > $pid = $1; > > print "$_\n$pid\n"; > > all I can come up with is > > line = "123 foo" > > pid = nil > line.sub!(/^(\d+)\s+/) {pid = $1; ''} > > puts line, pid > > Is there a better way perhaps? I don't think I understand the question. Ruby supports replacement with and empty string and even $1, just like Perl. line.sub!(/^((\d+)\s+/, "") puts "#{line}\n#{$1}" Hope that helps. James Edward Gray II