From: "Dan Stevens (IAmAI)" <dan.stevens.iamai@...>
Date: 2007-08-07T18:17:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Feature request (pretty_inspect variant, yielding single quotes instead of double)

Here's what I suggest:

class String

  def quote(str="\'")
    "#{str}#{self}#{str}"
  end

  def quote!(str="\'")
    self.insert(0, str) << str
  end

end

#Tests
test = "abc" => "abc"
test.quote => "'abc'"
test.quote("\"") => "\"abc\""
test.quote("123") => "123abc123"
test => "abc"
test.quote! => "'abc'"
test => "'abc'"

On 07/08/07, Ronald Fischer <ronald.fischer@venyon.com> wrote:
> require 'pp'
> s='abc'
> t='#{a}'
> print s.pretty_inspect
> print t.pretty_inspect
>
> this outputs:
>   "abc"
>   "\#{a}"
>
> This is of course correct - both show the content of the strings,
> and both print it in a way that this can be used in an eval to get
> the original string back:
>
> eval('t1='+t.pretty_inspect.chomp) # ==> t1==t
>
> My main objection is that from a viewpoint of readability, it would
> be better if pretty_inspect would generate single quoted strings
> instead of double quoted ones, since less \-escaping is necessary
> in this case.
>
> Since changing the present implementation of pretty_inspect might
> break existing code, I suggest that
>
> - either pretty_inspect takes an additional argument which
> tells what type of string quotation shall be used for producing
> the output string in the case of pretty-printing strings, or
>
> - provide an additional function in pp (say: pretty_inspectq),
> which formats strings by using single quotes.
>
> The first variant would be more flexible (as we could then
> even require 'abc'.pretty_inspect('%q()'), producing %q(abc)
> in return), but causes more work. For the second variant,
> the current code of pretty_inspect can be reused, changing
> just the part which formats strings. Here is an implementation
> suggestion for pretty_inspectq-ing a string s:
>
>   "'"+s.gsub(/([^\\]|^)'/,'\1\\\\'+"'")+"'"
>
> Any opinions on this?
>
> Ronald
> --
> Ronald Fischer <ronald.fischer@venyon.com>
> Phone: +49-89-452133-162
>
> --
> Ronald Fischer <ronald.fischer@venyon.com>
> Phone: +49-89-452133-162
>
>