From: Simon Krahnke <overlord@...>
Date: 2008-04-24T21:35:09+09:00
Subject: Re: puts "\\".gsub("\\", "\\\\")

* martinus <martin.ankerl@gmail.com> (11:53) schrieb:

> Hello, I have a mini-ruby quiz. Guess what this line of code writes to
> the console, then try it for yourself:
>
> puts "\\".gsub("\\", "\\\\")
>
> Why is that so?

Well, it's an faq. In short: The backslash is special in strings *and*
in the replacement text. So for every literal backslash you need four
backslashes, which is quite unreadable. If you don't need \1 and Co you
better use the block form: gsub("\\") { "\\\\" }.

mfg,                       simon .... hth