From: Lee Smith <leeb@...>
Date: 2008-06-01T22:13:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Slashes in YAML

Robert Klemme wrote:
> On 01.06.2008 14:47, Lee Smith wrote:
>> I wish to store several LaTex constants in YAML file and process them in
>> ruby. LaTex uses single slashes ('\') as a markup specifier. If I
>> specify a yaml string containing a single slash (e.g., "^{\circ}" which
>> is the LaTex markup for 'degrees Celsius') ruby will helpfully escape
>> the slash for me yielding "^{\\circ}"
>> 
>> I've tried all sorts of quoting and other tricks to tell ruby to "leave
>> my string alone" but it insists on escaping my slash!
> 
> I'm not sure what you're after.  Do you want to use YAML strings
> directly for LaTex?  Or did you trap into the usual inspect issue:
> 
> irb(main):002:0> puts "a\\b"
> a\b
> => nil
> irb(main):003:0> puts "a\\b".inspect
> "a\\b"
> => nil
> 
> Cheers
> 
>   robert

Robert,

Thanks for the quick response:

Here's the snippet of my YAML file

--- snip ---
C:
  - ^{\circ}
  - degree Celsius
  - degrees Celsius
--- snip ---

After loading the file via YAML::load into a "myVar" object, when I 
pretty print (pp) the hash myVar["C"][0], the output is:

"^{\\circ}"

REAL TIME UPDATE... Your comment on "inspect" reminded me to verify that 
pretty printing was doing just that!

puts myVar["C"][0] produces exactly what I wanted... "^{\circ}" (with 
one slash!)

Thanks for your help!

Lee
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