From: subbu <loveajax@...>
Date: 2008-07-09T20:46:08+09:00
Subject: Re: 'ab\c' and 'ab\\c'

Interesting findings. Thanks all for the explanations.

On Jul 9, 2:25 pm, Calamitas <calamita...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Max Williams
>
> <toastkid.willi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think you stumbled on another special character, \c, which seems to
> > have some weird properties:
>
> > -in single quotes, must be followed by another character, but when it
> > is, just swaps the \ for a \\
>
> > -in double quotes, again must be followed by another character, which it
> > translates into a number, though by what scheme i have no idea:
>
> In a double-quoted string, \c followed by another character forms a
> control character. Control characters are character codes 0 to 31 in
> the ASCII character set. When you call inspect on a string (as irb
> does for you), Ruby escapes these control characters and those are the
> number you are seeing.
>
> In a single-quoted string, \c doesn't do anything, just like "The Ruby
> programming language" says. Irb gets confused here and does interpret
> the \c, thinks the string goes on while it doesn't, asks more input
> until a quote is given, which really starts a new string which is then
> unterminated and that's the error you get.
>
> It's a bug in irb.
>
> Peter