hemant wrote: > On 7/23/07, Robert Dober <robert.dober / gmail.com> wrote: >> On 7/23/07, geetha <sangeetha.geethu05 / gmail.com> wrote: >> > Hi, >> > I am doing string search is one html file usign ruby. >> > If the seach sting is htmlentities means I have not match that word. >> > How can i do it. Please any one help me..... >> > >> > regards, >> > S.Sangeetha. >> > >> We might be able to help you better if you post the data and what you >> expect to get out from it exactly. >> >> Robert >> >> -- > > Robert: > If search string has html entities, then do not proceed with search. > > Well, its very hard to define if query string has HTML entities or > not? No it's not... > For example, do you consider following string has HTML entities? > > b = "hello world and so what; and < and there we go >" > > dunno yes and no, but if your answer is yes, Then you'd be wrong. irb(main):001:0> require 'rexml/text' => true irb(main):002:0> re = REXML::Text::REFERENCE => /(?:&([\w:][\-\w\d\.:]*);|&#\d+;|&#x[0-9a-fA-F]+;)/ irb(main):003:0> "this & that" =~ re => 5 irb(main):004:0> "hello world and so what; and < and there we go >" =~ re => nil Admittedly I'm not scanning for all defined HTML entities, just for valid XML entities, but given that one's a superset of the other, and undefined entity references probably shouldn't occur within a valid HTML document anyway, it's good enough for most purposes... -- Alex