skip

Attempts to skip over the given pattern beginning with the scan pointer. If it matches, the scan pointer is advanced to the end of the match, and the length of the match is returned. Otherwise, nil is returned.

It's similar to scan, but without returning the matched string.

s = StringScanner.new('test string')
p s.skip(/\w+/)   # -> 4
p s.skip(/\w+/)   # -> nil
p s.skip(/\s+/)   # -> 1
p s.skip(/\w+/)   # -> 6
p s.skip(/./)     # -> nil