Ruby 3.1 adds MatchData#match & MatchData#match_length

Ruby 3.1 introduces the MatchData#match & MatchData#match_length methods which returns the substring matched against a regular expression & it's length respectively.

1=> str = "Ruby 3.1 introduces MatchData#match method"
2=>  m = /(?<lang>\S+)(\s)(?<version>[\d\.]+)/.match(str)
3=> #<MatchData "Ruby 3.1" lang:"Ruby" version:"3.1">
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Before Ruby 3.1

We have MatchData#[] method to access all the substring groups which are matched. We can access either a single match or multiple matches by giving a single index or range of indexes respectively using MatchData#[] method.

1=> m[:lang]
2=> "Ruby"
3
4=> m[1]
5=> "Ruby"
6=> m[:version]
7=> "3.1"
8
9=> m[0..2]
10=> ["Ruby 3.1", "Ruby", "3.1"]
11
12=> m[1..2]
13=> ["Ruby", "3.1"]
14
15
16=> m[0].length
17=> 8
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After Ruby 3.1

We have two new methods now to access the match data & it's length. The MatchData#match & MatchData#match_length methods accepts either an index or a symbol as an argument to return the match data & it's length.

1=> m.match(0)
2=> "Ruby 3.1"
3
4=> m.match(:version)
5=> "3.1"
6
7=> m.match(3)
8=> nil
9
10=> m.match_length(0)
11=> 8
12
13=> m.match_length(:version)
14=> 3
15
16=> m.match_length(3)
17=> nil
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Please note that MatchData#match is not same as MatchData#[] method. The later accepts an optional length or range as an argument to return the matched data but the former doesn't accept it, instead it allows only a single index or symbol as argument.

Here's the relevant pull request and feature discussion for this change.