String\#slice of Ruby in Vim script and Haskell

A Ruby example of String#[]

str = "Oh, this is a pen."
p str[/this is a (\w+)\./, 1]

The result is "pen". Since String#[] is just an alias of String#slice, (*1)

p str.slice(/this is a (\w+)\./, 1)

The result is completely same.

in Vim script

Vim script version needs two separate processes; getting the list of first-matched string itself and containing sub matches, and then getting the specific item.

let str = "Oh, this is a pen."
echo matchlist(str, 'this is a \(\w\+\)\.')[1]

(Added at Sun Jun 12 09:26:44 PDT 2011) thinca suggested that matchstr() with \zs and \ze is very handy, particularly because of the different behavior in the case when it didn't match.

let str = "Oh, this is a pen."
echo matchstr(str, 'this is a \zs\w\+\ze\.')

in Haskell

Haskell version needs three separate processes with Text.Regex.Posix.=~; it's almost same to Vim but the default =~ behaviour is to assume the regex object has "global" option, so you have to pick which match.

import Text.Regex.Posix ((=~))
main = do
  let str = "Oh this is a pen."
  print $ head (str =~ "this is a ([a-zA-Z_]*)" :: [[String]]) !! 1

(Added at Sun Jun 12 12:54:01 PDT 2011) The following code is another example; it's safe in runtime and also this supports Vim's \zs and \ze.

import Text.Regex.PCRE ((=~))
import Data.String.Utils (replace)
import Safe (headMay, atMay)
import Data.Maybe (fromMaybe)

matchstr :: String -> String -> String
matchstr expr pat =
  let x = replace "\\zs" "(" $ replace "\\ze" ")" pat in
  fromMaybe "" $ headMay (expr =~ x :: [[String]]) >>= \y -> atMay y 1

main = print $ matchstr "this is a pen" " \\zs\\w+\\ze"

in Clojure

(Added at Thu Mar 22 17:49:40 PDT 2012)

((re-find #"this is a (\w+)\." "Oh, this is a pen.") 1)
; "pen"

• (*1) Precisely no. Try and check the differences between them without the second argument.