The String class's native #match method will only return the first instance of a pattern match. This gem provides the #match_all method, which returns all instances of a pattern match within a String as an array.

Rails:

# in your Gemfile
gem "match_all"

Otherwise:

$ gem install match_all

string = "My cat is asleep on the couch. Now the cat is playing."

#match only returns the first match:

string.match(/cat/)
=> #<MatchData "cat">

But #match_all finds all of them:

string.match_all(/cat/)
=> [
      [0] #<MatchData "cat">,
      [1] #<MatchData "cat">
    ]

If the string contains "cat" 50 times, then #match_all will return an array with all 50 of those matches.

Each match is an instance of MatchData. This is especially useful if, e.g. you want to interrogate the matches to find out their starting/ending indexes within the string, etc.

This is a very simple gem, with 0 production dependencies (just rspec and pry as development/test dependencies for convenience).

The method already does what it's supposed to do, and I don't expect any more development to be necessary. That being said, issues and PR's are welcome if anyone notices anything that can be improved or added.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.