Thanks all. Now it works. The final form is
 /^#|^\s*$/

RR

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gennady F. Bystritsky [mailto:gfb / tonesoft.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 6:35 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: Regular expression question
> 
> 
> Well, Ruby regexps are not VI regexps. Look similar to some 
> extend, but still different. VI implements BRE, and Ruby is 
> closer to ERE (like in awk, egrep, etc.). Plus a lot of other 
> nice features.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Roman Rytov" <rrytov / entopia.com>
> To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 8:28 AM
> Subject: Re: Regular expression question
> 
> 
> My pattern works fine in VI. Back slash before (,) and | is 
> needed to assign special meaning to them.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Shannon Fang [mailto:xrfang / hotmail.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 6:22 PM
> > To: ruby-talk ML
> > Subject: Re: Regular expression question
> >
> >
> > >
> > >     line !~ /\(^#\)\|\(^[\s\t]*$\)/
> >
> > I think you just need to use ( not \(, I suppose it should be
> >
> > line !~ /^#|^\s*$/
> >
> > if you don't need to reference I think no () is needed. And 
> \s should 
> > include whitespace and \t?
> 
> I replaced already it to \S so the pattern now is
> \(^#\)|\(^\S*$\)
> 
> Nevertheless it doesn't work yet:-)
> 
> >
> > Shannon
> >
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> 
> 
> 
> 
>