From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: 2007-05-07T23:10:07+09:00
Subject: Re: command interpretation

On Mon, 07 May 2007 12:43:19 +0200, Martin Krischik wrote:

> Hallo,
> 
> I searched high and low to find how "command interpretation" actually
> works. But all I found is [1]:
> 
>   `echo command interpretation with interpolation and backslashes`
>   %x(echo command interpretation with interpolation and backslashes)
> 
> Now, this does not explain what kind of interpolation is done and more
> importantly: How to switch interpolation off.
> 
> Background: I use ruby on the vms operating system and I want to run the
> following test command:
> 
>   x = 卒WRITE SYS$OUTPUT F$TRNLNM("SOURCE")卒
> 
> But all I get is:
> 
> test.ruby:8: warning: parenthesize argument(s) for future version
> test.ruby:8: parse error
>   x = 卒WRITE SYS$OUTPUT F$TRNLNM("SOURCE")卒
>                          ^
>  From which I deduct that some "magic" is done with the $ character
> which I don't want.

What kind of quote is a 卒 ? It doesn't work out to be a backquote when I 
view it on my Linux system. Unlike perl and the shell, the $ isn't used 
for any magic in Ruby strings. (The #{} syntax is used instead.) The 
interpreter has decided to parse this as a function call within Ruby, and 
I'm guessing that's because your quotes aren't quotes.

--Ken

-- 
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/