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up vote 2 down vote favorite

I am trying to match a string with a non-breaking space ( ) given a variable that contains the string with a regular space. The string I am looking for is the text in a HTML link/anchor and I am using Watir (note the non-breaking space).

<a onlick='DoSomthing()' href=''>Some&nbsp;Text</a>

There appears to be a difference between a regex created by // and by Regex.new.

Interactive Ruby says the following is true (where my_text = 'Some Text'):

/Some Text/ == Regexp.new(my_text)

Yet while this returns True:

browser.link(:text, /Some Text/).exists?

This does not:

browser.link(:text, Regexp.new(my_text)).exists?

Nor does this:

browser.link(:text, /#{my_text}/).exists?

I've also tried the following with no luck:

Regexp.new(my_text.gsub(' ', '[[:space:]]'))

Does anyone know how I can accomplish this match?

share|improve this question
    
If you create a page that just has that one link, do the above attempts work? They worked for me when I tried them (while using watir-webdriver with Firefox). – Justin Ko Jul 12 '13 at 20:15
up vote 1 down vote accepted

Use alternation:

browser.link(:text, / |&nbsp;/).exists?

Also, try upgrading Ruby and gems. I've heard weird regex issues in Watir resolving magically that way.

share|improve this answer
    
I've just discovered that the issue apparently has nothing to do with Regex. The problem is somehow rooted in passing a string constant to a method. I am going to post that issue separately. Thanks for the suggestion. – Mont Jul 12 '13 at 22:20
    
As best I can tell this was a glitch in the IDE (RubyMotion). The exact same code I was using before is now producing different results. While Regex/Watir are matching fine with just a regular space (now) I am marking this as the answer as swapping spaces for '( |&nbsp;)' seems more robust. – Mont Jul 15 '13 at 15:28
up vote 1 down vote

A non breaking space is an html entity, and regex afaik does not recognize that as a space, so you need to convert one or the other before matching.

my_text = 'Some&nbsp;Text'

in other words, I don't think regex would ever match a space to "&nbsp;". change your search string, or the source text, whichever is easier...

share|improve this answer
    
I had seen elsewhere that [[:space:]] would work. I don't know if it should/shouldn't. The crazy thing is that /Some Text/ works just fine but as soon as I stick "Some Text" in a variable it refuses to work. – Mont Jul 12 '13 at 22:11

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