# different ways of making regular expressions
google = Regexp.new( "Results.*of about <b>(.*)<\/b>.*Search took" )
yahoo = /.*out of about (.*) &nbsp;/
msn = %r{Results .* of about (.*) containing "<span .*}

# matching
# successfull matches return the string index
puts "The way to heaven" =~ /heaven/        
# unsuccessfull matches return nil
puts "The way to heaven" =~ /hell/

# unescaping brackets using regex
# example based off
# http://www.rubycentral.com/book/tut_stdtypes.html
def unescape( string )
    string.dup.gsub( /&(.*?);/n ) {
        case $1.dup
            when /\Agt\z/ni then '>'
            when /\Alt\z/ni then '<'
        end
    }
end

puts unescape( "&lt;html&gt;" )

# matching extraction
url = %r{http://(.*):(.*)@(.*)(/.*)}
match = url.match( "http://user:password@www.host.com/pathtofile" )

# print pieces
pieces = []
match.size.times do | i |
    puts match[ i ]
    pieces << match[ i ]
end

fullurl, username, password, hostname, path = pieces
puts <<EOF

Username: #{username}
Password: #{password}
Hostname: #{hostname}
Path: #{path}
URL: #{fullurl}
EOF