From: "David A. Black" Date: 2005-04-28T21:12:50+09:00 Subject: Re: Scanning a String Hi -- On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Robert Klemme wrote: > > "David A. Black" schrieb im Newsbeitrag > news:Pine.LNX.4.61.0504280320190.13336@wobblini... >> Hi -- >> >> On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Robert Klemme wrote: >>> Yes, it's preferred because it's faster. Although your variant works, > I >>> usually prefer to put the correct number of backslashes in there: >>> >>> "pious".gsub(/([aeiou])(?=[aeiou])/, '\\1\'\\2') >> >> Why do you consider that more correct? > > Although both produce the same: > >>> p '\1' > "\\1" > => nil >>> p '\\1' > "\\1" > => nil > > because Ruby is so kind to take "\1" literally (i.e not using the > backslash as escaping char because "\1" is not an escaping sequence). I > prefer to explicitely escape the backslash and put the "1" in there > literally. IMHO it's more fail safe when changes are done (especially > when changing single quotes to double quotes, see below). If you're talking about double quotes then clearly it has to be "\\1". I meant specifically in the case of single quotes. Anyway, it's not a big deal -- I was just curious. David -- David A. Black dblack@wobblini.net