From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2001-03-06T21:11:31+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:12121] Re: String.gsub()

On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Mike Bowler wrote:

> I'm a little confused about the solution.  Why would we need the extra \
> before the \1 just because an escaped quote was nearby?  Is this just
> wierdness in the ruby parser or is there an actual reason for this?  Now,
> I'm just curious :-)
> 
When using "" the \ character is used as an escape character so that for
example "\t" is ONE char called tab. If you want to have a string with \1
in it you need to write "\\1" since \\ is used to get ONE actual \ in the
string. However you can also use '\1' since there are no \ cahrs in ''
strings.

Hope this makes it clearer.

/R