Applescript how to get part of the text and set it as variable?

The following AppleScript, using a specialized Ruby handler will extract all of the same repeat character sequences from the input string — into an AppleScript list.

For this input:

and based on the code below, it will create an AppleScript list as follows for the search character "A":

charList = {"AAA", "AAA"}

and you set a variable:

set var1 to first item of charList

If you want all occurrences of "BBB", you set aChar to "B", and so forth.

set charList to {}

set theText to text returned of (display dialog "Get string" default answer "")
set aChar to "A"
set args to theText's quoted form & space & aChar's quoted form
set charList to paragraphs of my get_string(args)
log (items of charList)
return

on get_string(args)
	return do shell script "ruby <<-EOF - " & args & "
#!/usr/bin/ruby

workStr, theChar = ARGV
extract_array = workStr.split(/([\"#{theChar}\"]+)/).delete_if(&:empty?)
					   .reject { |x| !x.include?(\"#{theChar}\") }
puts extract_array if extract_array
EOF"
end get_string

How do you know what’s going to be in the returned string?

(You say search for “AAA” and set it as variable, but if you’re searching for “AAA” you already know its value!)

The only difference between this posted code and the preceding is replacing "reject" and the not (!) operator in the Ruby code with the improved "select" operator. This is the equivalent of removing double negatives from an English sentence, though the result of the Ruby code is the same as previous.

set charList to {}

set theText to text returned of (display dialog "Get string" default answer "")
set aChar to "A"
set args to theText's quoted form & space & aChar's quoted form
set charList to paragraphs of my get_string(args)
log (items of charList)
return

on get_string(args)
	return do shell script "ruby <<-EOF - " & args & "
#!/usr/bin/ruby

workStr, theChar = ARGV
extract_array = workStr.split(/([\"#{theChar}\"]+)/).delete_if(&:empty?)
					   .select { |x| x.include?(\"#{theChar}\") }
puts extract_array if extract_array
EOF"
end get_string