On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 05:05:00AM +0900, Ryan Leavengood wrote:
> Just to add another voice to the maelstrom: I have never coded Perl
> and don't particular like it, but I almost always use the $1 variables
> in Ruby. I have been coding Ruby for over four years and I rarely find
> instances where MatchData is all that much better than =~ and the $1
> variables.
> 
> They are just more convenient in the typical case:

MatchData can be quite convenient too

str = "foobar 2005-12-15"
if md = /(\S+) (\d+)-(\d+)-(\d+)/.match(str)
  name, year, month, day = md.captures             # => ["foobar", "2005", "12", "15"]
  name                                             # => "foobar"
  # ....
end

If you want to name the captures,
    md.captures
looks better than 
    $1, $2, $3, $4


-- 
Mauricio Fernandez