regex - Convert a string to regular expression ruby

Question

I need to convert string like "/[ws]+/" to regular expression.

"/[ws]+/" => /[ws]+/

I tried using different Regexp methods like:

Regexp.new("/[ws]+/") => //[w ]+//, similarly Regexp.compile and Regexp.escape. But none of them returns as I expected.

Further more I tried removing backslashes:

Regexp.new("[ws]+") => /[w ]+/ But not have a luck.

Then I tried to do it simple:

str = "[ws]+"
=> "[w ]+"

It escapes. Now how could string remains as it is and convert to a regexp object?

Answer 1

Looks like here you need the initial string to be in single quotes (refer this page)

>> str = '[ws]+'
 => "[\w\s]+" 
>> Regexp.new str
 => /[ws]+/