ruby operator "=~" [duplicate]
The =~ operator matches the regular expression against a string, and it returns either the offset of the match from the string if it is found, otherwise nil.
/mi/ =~ "hi mike" # => 3 "hi mike" =~ /mi/ # => 3 "mike" =~ /ruby/ # => nil You can place the string/regex on either side of the operator as you can see above.
This operator matches strings against regular expressions.
s = 'how now brown cow's =~ /cow/ # => 14s =~ /now/ # => 4s =~ /cat/ # => nilIf the String matches the expression, the operator returns the offset, and if it doesn't, it returns nil. It's slightly more complicated than that: see documentation here; it's a method in the String class.