From: John Woods <jqwoods@...>
Date: 2008-02-23T02:27:44+09:00
Subject: gsub("\\", "\\\\") seems unintuitive

The following confusing behavior is noted in the pickaxe book (2nd ed) 
on page 75:

   # I would expect two backslashes in the result
   irb> puts "\\".gsub("\\","\\\\")
   \

   # I would expect four backslashes in the result
   irb> puts "\\".gsub("\\","\\\\\\\\")
   \\

I can certainly work around it, but it seems unintuitive. Is there a 
reason why gsub behaves this way? Just curious...