From: Carlos <angus@...>
Date: 2004-06-05T02:23:45+09:00
Subject: Re: utf8 strings and inspect

[Benny <linux@marcrenearns.de>, 2004-06-04 18.53 CEST]
> if I have an utf8-string
> 
>         utf8str = "���"
> 
> then Object#inspect gives me
> 
>         utf8str.inspect #=> "\303\244\303\266\303\274"
> 
> but String#to_s gives me
> 
>         utf8str.to_s #=> "���"
> 
> even if the documentation says that Object#inspect uses .to_s to convert an
> object to a string.
> 
> even funnier, in the irb (I guess that is, because the irb uses
> Object#inspect for the output)
> 
> irb(main):010:0>utf8str.to_s 
> => "\303\244\303\266\303\274"
> irb(main):010:0>utf8str.inspect
> => "\"\\303\\244\\303\\266\\303\\274\""
> 
> so how can I change Object#inspect to use String#to_s ?

You don't need to. Just tell ruby that you are working with UTF-8 and not
ASCII, and it will not escape the non-ASCII bytes in the output.

irb(main):001:0> utf8str="���"
=> "\303\244\303\266\303\274"
irb(main):002:0> $KCODE='u'
=> "u"
irb(main):003:0> utf8str
=> "���"
irb(main):004:0> utf8str.inspect
=> "\"���\""