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Element Reference â If passed a single index, returns a substring of one character at that index. If passed a start index and a length, returns a substring containing length characters starting at the index. If passed a range, its beginning and end are interpreted as offsets delimiting the substring to be returned.

In these three cases, if an index is negative, it is counted from the end of the string. For the start and range cases the starting index is just before a character and an index matching the string's size. Additionally, an empty string is returned when the starting index for a character range is at the end of the string.

Returns nil if the initial index falls outside the string or the length is negative.

If a Regexp is supplied, the matching portion of the string is returned. If a capture follows the regular expression, which may be a capture group index or name, follows the regular expression that component of the MatchData is returned instead.

If a match_str is given, that string is returned if it occurs in the string.

Returns nil if the regular expression does not match or the match string cannot be found.

a = "hello there"

a[1]                   #=> "e"
a[2, 3]                #=> "llo"
a[2..3]                #=> "ll"

a[-3, 2]               #=> "er"
a[7..-2]               #=> "her"
a[-4..-2]              #=> "her"
a[-2..-4]              #=> ""

a[11, 0]               #=> ""
a[11]                  #=> nil
a[12, 0]               #=> nil
a[12..-1]              #=> nil

a[/[aeiou](.)\1/]      #=> "ell"
a[/[aeiou](.)\1/, 0]   #=> "ell"
a[/[aeiou](.)\1/, 1]   #=> "l"
a[/[aeiou](.)\1/, 2]   #=> nil

a[/(?<vowel>[aeiou])(?<non_vowel>[^aeiou])/, "non_vowel"] #=> "l"
a[/(?<vowel>[aeiou])(?<non_vowel>[^aeiou])/, "vowel"]     #=> "e"

a["lo"]                #=> "lo"
a["bye"]               #=> nil