From: Ryan Leavengood <mrcode@...>
Date: 2001-11-03T08:17:05+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:24227] Re: literal \0 in String#gsub replacement

> Here's one way:
> 
>   irb 23> "apple [cherry] lemon".gsub(/\[(.*?)\]/, "\003\\1")
>        ==>"apple \003cherry lemon"

Actually I tried that too in IRB but when I tried it in actual Ruby I
was surprised.  That results in the string containing the actual ASCII
character with code 003 (which printed as a heart on my Cygwin console.)
Since IRB actually calls "inspect" when it prints out, you got what you
saw.  To actually get a literal \003 in the resulting String, I found
that this worked:

"apple [cherry] lemon".gsub(/\[(.+?)\]/,'\\\003\1')

So Mark, if you want the ASCII character with code 003, use DAB's
method, but if you want the literal \003, then use the above.

Ryan Leavengood