From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2001-07-16T12:44:12+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:17900] Re: regular expressions and string#sub!

Hello --

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Ernest Ellingson wrote:

> This particular code yields some strange results.
> I'm using ruby 1.63 on Win2k
>
> x="aren't"
> z="\\\'"
> puts x         =>  aren't  (expected)
> puts z         =>  \'    (expected)
> x.sub!(/\'/,z)  =>   arentt
> puts x        =>   arentt   (huh?)

Interesting.  I can't quite puzzle it out, but it seems to
have something to do with the variables $`, $&, and $'.

  x="before during after"
  p x.sub(/during/,"\\\`")
  p x.sub(/during/,"\\\&")
  p x.sub(/during/,"\\\'")

  =>
  "before before  after"
  "before during after"
  "before  after after"

(ruby 1.6.4 (2001-06-04) [i586-linux] and ruby 1.7.1 (2001-07-03)
[i586-linux])

Since I can't puzzle it out, I can't say whether it's a bug :-)
But if it's not a bug, I'm not sure what it thinks it's doing.


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav