From: "Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner" <ed.odanow@...>
Date: 2007-11-02T14:51:35+09:00
Subject: Re: backslash sequences\1\2 in regexs (backreferences)

Morton Goldberg wrote:
> On Nov 2, 2007, at 12:59 AM, 7stud -- wrote:
> 
>> --output:--
>> got
>>
>> That makes it sound like \1 and \2 can be freely used in the  
>> replacement
>> string.  There is no mention of the fact that single quotes are  
>> required
>> to keep them from being interpreted as chars written in octal.  That
>> description is very misleading
> 
> No, it's not, That single quotes are required has nothing to do with
> gsub. It's something you should know from your understanding of how
> the Ruby interpreter handles double quoted strings. As Mike Stok said
> the string literal is converted to "a\002\001" long before gsub is
> called.
> 
> Regards, Morton
You should simply use "double-quote-double-quote"

irb(main):001:0> puts "fred:smith".gsub(/(\w+):(\w+)/, '\\2, \\1')
smith, fred

Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner

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