From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2007-11-07T10:41:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Escaping characters

On 11/6/07, Jeremy Woertink <jeremywoertink@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't understand this.
>
>
> irb(main):002:0> '\''
> => "'"
> irb(main):003:0> '\\'
> => "\\"
> irb(main):004:0>
>
>
> I know the backslash escapes a character, so in the first line, I escape
> the quote so it will return a string that is a single quote, but in the
> second one I would expect it to return "\", instead it returns "\\" both
> backslashes, and I only want one of them. My actual problem looks like
> this:
>
> irb(main):004:0> "(G\\D01=Name~\D02=1234~\\"
> => "(G\\D01=Name~D02=1234~\\"
>
> The string that is returned is wrong,but if I do
> irb(main):005:0> "(G\\D01=Name~\\D02=1234~\\"
> => "(G\\D01=Name~\\D02=1234~\\"
>
> the string that is returned is still wrong.

s = '\\'
puts '\\' #returns \
s.length #returns 1

It's one byte of value 134 in base 10.  What you are seeing is the
representation of it in irb.  Like try...

s = "hello
"

Note the return character before the second end quote.

Todd