re = /\b(^\w+)/m
str = 'While the patient had received travel vaccinations in preparation for a trip to India two years ago, it was not immediately certain that he received the meningococcal vaccine.
Investigation is ongoing, and this report will be updated as more information becomes available.
Reported by:
?lvaro Mej?a-Echeverry'
subst = ' '
result = str.gsub(re, subst)
# Print the result of the substitution
puts result
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Ruby, please visit: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Regexp.html