Todd Benson wrote:
>  I'm drawing a blank here with this one.  Why doesn't this work then...
>  
>  irb(main):006:0> r = /\A[oh]*\z/
>  => /\A[oh]*\z/
>  irb(main):007:0> s = "hello, there"
>  => "hello, there"
>  irb(main):008:0> r === s
>  => false

Maybe I'm confused about was wanted originally. The above tests the 
following condition:

   (set of chars occurring in given string)
      is_a_subset_of
   (given set of chars).

irb(main):007:0>  /\A[oh]*\z/ === "hohoho"
=>  true
irb(main):008:0>  /\A[oh]*\z/ === "ho ho"
=>  false

If you want superset instead of subset, this works:

irb(main):013:0>  /(?=.*h)(?=.*o)/ === "h o"
=>  true

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407