From: Mike Bowler <mbowler@...>
Date: 2001-03-06T20:50:24+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:12116] String.gsub()

The method String.gsub() isn't working the way I expected (or the way
the pickaxe book describes it for that matter).  Given this code:

def replaceSingleQuotesWithDouble( inputString )
   puts "original="+inputString

   puts inputString.gsub(/'(.+)'/, "\"\1\"")
end

replaceSingleQuotesWithDouble("foo 'bar' foo")

I would expect the output to be

    foo "bar" foo

Instead I get

    foo "" bar

The match is successful but it seems that the variable \1 hasn't been
assigned by the time we are doing the substitution.

Am I doing something wrong?

BTW gsub! seems to behave in the same way.

Mike
mbowler@GargoyleSoftware.com